Capping off a public squabble between Barack Obama and John Edwards, an outside group with ties to Edwards released television advertisements on Wednesday that touted the North Carolinian's campaign.
The Alliance for New America, the 527 behind the ads, has been at the center of controversy for several days after it was revealed that Nick Baldick, a former high-ranking Edwards' adviser, headed the organization. The disclosure, as well as revelations that the group planned to spend $750,000 in a home stretch Iowa media blitz, prompted complaints from Obama that Edwards was acting hypocritically, denouncing outside groups on one hand while allowing them to advertise at his behalf on the other.
The back-and-forth underscored not only the desperate desire of each candidate to be seen as the agent of reform, but also the arcane and confusing nature of Federal Election Commission regulations.
After he was called to put an end to the 527's ad campaign, Edwards said that he was legally prohibited from doing so.
''The way the law exists today is you have no control,'' he said this past Thursday. ''You're not allowed by law to have contact or to coordinate with 527s. So can you discourage it? Yes, and I do.''
And indeed, according to Bob Biersack, a spokesman at the FEC, it would venture on the illegal if a candidate were to "coordinate" with a 527. Coordinate, according to the law, is defined as "in cooperation, consultation or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate, a candidate's authorized committee, or a political party committee."
That said, Biersack adds, "as long as the decision to continue or stop was made by the group, then candidates are free to speak as to what the group is doing or what they hope the group will do. That would not in and of itself be coordination either." So Edwards could say, publicly, that he didn't want the 527 to run the ads (which he technically has) and Baldick, whose firm was on the Edward's payroll as recently as the campaign's second quarter, could call them off (which he hasn't).
In 2004, ironically, Edwards was on the opposite side of the 527 debate, criticizing President Bush for not personally stopping Swift Boat Veterans for Truth from attacking John Kerry's Vietnam service.
"There's one person, one person who can put an end to this today if he had the backbone, the courage, the leadership to do it. And that person is George W. Bush," he said back then. "Every day that this goes on and the president refuses to say 'stop these ads,' we're learning more and more about the character of George W. Bush."
Of course, beyond the implications of a candidate meddling in 527 affairs, there are virtually no similarities between the Swift Boat episode and respective 2008 ads. The Alliance for New America has a policy agenda - the group has been hired by six local branches of the Service Employees International Union. And while it touts only Edwards as the candidate to solve health care, energy, and campaign finance issues, the group does not make individual political attacks in its advertising campaign.
We are "an issue organization with its own distinct agenda," said Shane Allers, the executive director of SEUI Local 284 out of Minnesota, "to ensure candidates are asked how they will make the middle class and issues like health care their top priority in Washington."
And as the New York Times columnist - and increasingly frequent Obama critic - Paul Krugman noted, if the other Democrats were on the benefiting end of the ad campaign, there would likely be no complaining. "It may be partisan to say that a 527 run by labor unions supporting health care reform isn't the same thing as a 527 run by insurance companies opposing it. But it's also the simple truth."