As the presidential election draws closer, the candidates take part in a campaign finance arms race. Currently, the Obama campaign holds a monetary advantage over the Republican campaigns. The disparity in funding sources for different campaigns is significant, and one must evaluate why and how the Obama campaign takes the approach it does to funding.
At the end of January, the Obama campaign claimed on tumblr that they had raised more money from small donors than the Republican candidates' campaigns had raised from everyone. The graphic below was published with the caption, "Us vs. them, in one bar chart."
The idea of "us versus them" demonstrates that President Obama's campaign is taking a more plebiscitary approach towards campaign finance, by appealing to individual potential donors by suggesting the campaign represents the view of the majority rather than that of interest groups or higher-up representatives. The sidebar on the campaign's tumblr even reads, "The other guys have corporate lobbyists and special interests on their side. We've got you."
Although the campaign does seek out (and receives a significant portion of its funding from) large donors, its main idea emphasized in public relations is to persuade individual citizens to contribute whatever they can. President Obama proclaimed during his first campaign that he would not take money from lobbyists: a risk which may deprive the campaign of the resources needed to compete with other candidates, but a principle that makes President Obama more attractive to voters who seek transparency, which the Romney campaign has recently gotten some flak for. The Obama campaign takes a "one person, one vote" approach here, because no matter the number of endorsements from interest groups and lobbyists, reaching out to individual voters will help them get more individual votes come November.
The Obama campaign draws upon Neustadtian strategies of persuasion here as well. It conveys to Americans that by supporting the campaign, they are not only supporting their president, but their nation. After all, it's not called "Obama for President;" it's called "Obama for America. As well, by highlighting policies that benefit several common groups in the United States (women, minorities, LGBT* Americans, people of faith) the campaign proclaims that Obama's presidency has served the people's interests, therefore they should protect these interests by contributing. As Neustadt states, a President must "induce people] to believe that what he wants of them is what their own appraisal of their own responsibilities requires them to do in their interest, not his," and President Obama does just that.
Ultimately, both candidates benefit from large donations, and only time will tell whether President Obama's strategy of outreaching to individual small donors will pay off in the end.
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