An Oct. 30 Newsmax article by David Patten called Barack Obama “the first presidential candidate to opt out of the public system of financing presidential campaigns” and regurgitated the McCain campaign’s criticism of Obama for opting out.
But Obama is not the first candidate to “opt out of the public system of financing presidential campaigns” and break a promise in doing so — McCain is.
McCain took part in the campaign finance system for the primary, and his campaign even took out a bank loan using the matching funds he would get through the system as collateral. But once he began doing better in the primaries, McCain declared he was opting out of the system for the primaries (coincidentially, as he was reaching the system’s spending limit for the primary season), despite an opinion from Federal Election Commission chairman David Mason that McCain cannot legally opt out of public financing for the primary season without FEC approval and despite using public matching funds as loan collateral.
Patten makes no mention of this.
Similarly, an Oct. 30 article by Dave Eberhart reporting that “John McCain has highlighted the fact that throughout the campaign, his opponent Barack Obama’s ‘definition of rich has a way of creeping down.'” without also noting that McCain’s definition of “rich” begins at $5 million.