Be the change you wish to see in the world, unless you're running for president

Once upon a time, presidential candidate John McCain fought to diminish the role of "big money" in federal elections. In an effort to crush the potentially corrupting effects of large donations, he spearheaded, along with fellow Senator Russ Feingold, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which, as the Supreme Court stated in its opinion of McConnell vs FEC, addressed "the increased importance of soft money, the proliferation of issue ads, and the disturbing findings of a Senate investigation into campaign practices related to the 1996 federal elections." Now, however, in the midst of an outrageously expensive campaign season, McCain has fallen under criticism for what Michael Luo describes in The New York Times as "wring[ing] the maximum out of campaign finance laws in ways that some contend are at odds with the spirit of the reforms they championed."

True, his efforts so far have been legally permissible. But they have also been sketchy. Luo notes, for example, that fund-raisers have largely devoted themselves to soliciting contributions of up to $70,000 for a "special joint fund-raising account," and that Web advertisements for the McCain-Palin Compliance Fund, permitted under the auspices of funding legal and accounting costs, ask for donations to finance "a portion of the cost of broadcast advertising."

Of course, on one hand, the need to raise money is evident. Luo writes in another NYT article that the Obama campaign "shattered fund-raising records," spending $53 million in the month of August alone. Raising obscene amounts of money has become an integral part of the campaigning process. But, at the same time, it is disheartening to see a has-been hero of fund-raising righteousness stoop to finding loopholes in the legislation he once championed.