From a New Yorker article: “…Obama sought the Presidency in
part because he hoped to alter the relationship between powerful financial
interests and those who govern. On his first day in office, he banned lobbyists
from his Administration. He later noted, “One of the reasons I ran for
President was because I believed so strongly that the voices of everyday
Americans—hardworking folks doing everything they can to stay afloat—just
weren’t being heard over the powerful voices of the special interests in
Washington.” During the 2008 campaign, he discouraged supporters from
contributing unlimited sums to “527 groups,” the predecessors of Super PACs.
“Obama acknowledges that his record on campaign-finance
issues is not entirely pure. In 2008, after championing campaign-finance reform
in the Senate, he broke his own pledge to accept public financing as a
Presidential candidate, and became instead the first nominee since Watergate to
depend entirely on private funds. The decision was pragmatic: he was so popular
that he handily raised more money than John McCain, ultimately spending a
record-breaking seven hundred and forty-five million dollars. In 2007, Obama
admitted that he suffered “from the same original sin of all politicians, which
is: We’ve got to raise money.” But he insisted that he would fight to reform
the system: “The argument is not that I’m pristine, because I’m swimming in the
same muddy water. The argument is that I know it’s muddy and I want to clean it
up….”
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