Permanent Campaigner-in-Chief: Obama Holds All-Time Record Number of Fundraisers
With the non-recovery Obama recovery inching along, Democrats still tend to bristle with indignation at complaints that Obama spends far more time and taxpayer money campaigning than he does governing. But as detailed in The London Daily Mail, a new book by a US Naval Academy Political Science professor, the complaints about Obama frenetically trying to keep his job instead of trying to do it, are clearly valid.
Barack Obama has already held more re-election fundraising events than every elected president since Richard Nixon combined, according to figures to be published in a new book.
Read that again! Presidents Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush each served a single term. Presidents Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush served two terms each. And Obama has now held more campaign fundraisers than ALL of them combined!!!
The figures, contained a in a new book called The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign by Brendan J. Doherty, due to be published by University Press of Kansas in July, give statistical backing to the notion that Obama is more preoccupied with being re-elected than any other commander-in-chief of modern times.
Doherty, who has compiled statistics about presidential travel and fundraising going back to President Jimmy Carter in 1977, found that Obama had held 104 fundraisers by March 6th this year, compared to 94 held by Presidents Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Snr, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush combined.
Since then, Obama has held another 20 fundraisers, bringing his total to 124. Carter held four re-election fundraisers in the 1980 campaign, Reagan zero in 1984, Bush Snr 19 in 1992, Clinton 14 in 1996 and Bush Jnr 57 in 2004…
In his State of the Union speech in January, Obama bemoaned the ‘corrosive influence of money in politics’. The following month, he reversed course and announced he was allowing cabinet members and top advisors to speak at big money events for so-called super PACs – unaccountable outside groups raising money for his re-election.
During the 2008 election, Obama abandoned a pledge to opt for public funding of his campaign, instead opting to raise an unlimited amount privately. He then raised and spent approximately $730 million, almost double the campaign funds of Senator John McCain, his Republican opponent.
Obviously, if Obama had spent less time campaigning and fundraising these past three and a half years, and more time actually governing, he might have a record of some modest accomplishment to campaign on. As it is, the failures of his policies pretty well speak for themselves.
Tags: Barack Obama, election 2012
