The landscape of American political campaigning changed radically on Jan. 21, 2010, when five of the nine United States Supreme Court justices decided in favor of the plaintiffs in the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission case.

Their verdict made it legal for individuals or organizations to raise and spend unlimited sums in order to bankroll any and all political candidate(s) and/or cause(s) they select. It gave corporations, unions, Political Action Committees and other special interest groups carte blanche to use any and all fiscal resources at their disposal to convince, via any means necessary, an increasingly polarized, uninformed, and often misinformed electorate to vote a certain way.

When the court handed down its ruling, President Barack Obama quite properly decried it: “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests,” he said at the time. “They should be decided by the American people.”

President Obama wasn’t alone in his displeasure over the decision; others expressed similar sentiments. Arizona Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, commented, “There’s going to be, over time, a backlash when you see the amounts of union and corporate money that’s going to go into political campaigns.” That view was shared by none other than Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, whose on-the-record comment after the Supreme Court’s ruling was, “Today’s decision was a serious disservice to our country.”

But despite President Obama’s public, strident, and presumably continuing indignation over the court’s decision, early last week he reversed course by indicating through his aides he had reluctantly decided to support Priorities USA Action, the “Super-PAC” which is campaigning for his re-election.

Obama’s decision to participate in a practice he’s publicly condemned makes sense strategically; his announcement simply acknowledges that he’s going to play election-year politics by the same bare-knuckle rules as his opponents. After all, would anyone have expected Muhammad Ali to have tied one hand behind his back during his days as world heavyweight boxing champion in the mid-1960s, when he was matched against outclassed challengers like Cleveland Williams, Brian London or Zora Folley?

 Jim Messina, the president’s campaign manager, put it thusly in a blog post: “With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm.”

Fair enough. But by tacitly endorsing a system he eloquently and vehemently declared to be odious, Obama is not just descending to the level of his opponents; he’s ceding the moral high ground he and his supporters have long claimed on a variety of issues. The president’s decision is the equivalent of the previous administration’s touting, both at home and to an incredulous international community, of the righteousness of America’s mission in Iraq, even after it was revealed that United States military personnel had not only humiliated and tortured Iraqi prisoners of war, but had gleefully photographed themselves doing it.

To give the Commander-in-Chief his due, he never claimed to be the thoughtful, idealistic, morally unsullied, transformative paragon of virtue that some of his more enthusiastic boosters implied he was back in 2008. But in fairness to the president’s rational detractors (the ones who are still in touch with reality), he’s never gone out of his way to discourage the perception he walks on water, either.

While the decision to align himself with a Super-PAC is perfectly understandable strategically, it’s nonetheless disappointing, particularly coming from someone who had the courage (or so his admirers asserted at the time) to look the Supreme Court justices in the eye at his 2010 State of the Union address and unflinchingly state that they had made a mistake six days earlier when they handed down the Citizens United decision.

But actions speak louder than words, and Mr. Obama’s recent deeds state loudly and all too clearly that, like his Republican adversaries who cheered the decision that took the financial shackles off the types of people who created the notorious “Swift Boat” ads that helped to sink John Kerry in the election of 2004, he’s going to play by the same rules as his opposition does, even if those extremely skimpy regulations encourage unscrupulousness, unfairness, unjustness or a toxic combination of all three.

The most disheartening thing about the Obama camp’s decision to jump into bed with Priorities USA Action is that it makes it utterly clear the president and his people feel getting re-elected is more important than standing on principle. It also indicates he and his allies think bombarding Americans with non-stop exaggerations and misinformation in order to create fear and suspicion is the best way to sway and/or coerce potential voters. Which is ironic, since those are the very same tactics they’ve long (and accurately) been demonizing their right-wing foes for employing.

— Andy Young teaches high school English in York County. He hasn’t yet used any Super-PAC’s resources to help shape (or fund) his columns for the Journal Tribune.