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£500m election fund 'bought Obama victory'
Paul Thompson in Miami05.12.08
Barack Obama is likely to face calls that he "bought" his election victory after the final sums for his astonishing fund raising campaign are revealed.
Figures being presented to the Federal Election Commission are likely to show he raised £500 million ($750 million). The massive amount not only allowed Mr Obama to outspend John McCain, who raised £333 million ($480 million), in TV advertisements but changed the face of US politics.
The president-elect was the first candidate in more than 30 years not to use public financing for an election campaign.
George Bush's former deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, said:"If money talks, we'll likely soon hear the real reason why Barack Obama beat John McCain.
"Rather than showing the success of a new style of post-partisan politics, Mr Obama's victory may show the enduring truth of the old Chicago Golden Rule: he who has the gold rules."
Mr Obama free to raise funds and spend as he liked, laid out £157 million on TV adverts during the election campaign.
Reader views (4)
That's the system, and it is fairer than the UK one - in the London Mayor elections, for example, small parties are effectively barred from the broadcast media, outside of a few carefully pre-arranged slots of a few seconds in length. They are of course also banned from tv and radio advertising, while the big parties are given hours and hours of endless tv advertising free, both on state radio and tv (BBC) and the others. The small parties are also banned by spending rules from raising money to even write to every voter in that election! At least in the USA there is a way through - there is not in the United Kingdom any more. In the USA, if you can raise the cash, you can spend it on getting your message across. In the UK you are actively barred from putting across the message.
- Damian Hockney, London, UK
I did not vote for Obama. I don't understand why he spent
$800,000.- usd to not have to release his birth certificate. It only cost what $20.00 usd to get a copy.
What does he have to hide?
- Lindy, usa
I would have preferred a Republican victory.
It was, however, virtually a forgone conclusion that the Democratic Party were going to win, as, since 1945, when U.S. Election Rules were changed so as to limit a President to no more than two terms in office, only once has a particular U.S. Political Party held on to the presidency for longer than eight, and that was in 1988, when the forty-first U.S. President was elected to his one and only term in office.
Critics tried to claim that the forty-third U.S. President, allegedly 'stole' his second term.
None of the experts that I have heard, and/or read, since the 1960's, has ever 'apparently' commented on the claim (which I believe was 'actually' proved sometime after the 1960 U.S. Presidential Election), that the winner of that Election was actually Richard Nixon (and is 'not' -nor was it at the time in question- merely, or solely, the claim of a disgruntled losing opponent).
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- Kieron Mulcahy, Dublin, Ireland.,
He did buy the election-He also ran a smart race- I did not vote for him but I hope he will do well and hopefully not tear down the country while doing it-
- David White, Brunswick, Georgia USA
