Hide your checkbooks!!!!! Presidential candidates are coming to town

Perhaps we should feel “blessed” this week. The presidential hopefuls are coming to visit us.

OBAMA: He wants cash for his 'birthday'



Not so much because they’re all that concerned about us. It’s just that the campaigns have just over three more months to make it through before the Nov. 6 elections.

THEY NEED MONEY to pay for all those sound systems so we can hear them speak at rallies, and those campaign fliers they want us to see and (most importantly) all those television spots they’re going to air to tell us just how wretched their opponent truly is!

So we’re getting both President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney in town during the next few days, hoping that the cult of personality they can offer will encourage us not only to cast a ballot for them, but also to write out a check for a few hundred dollars.

Got to keep those nasty campaign ads flowing!

Yes, I’m a bit cynical when it comes to these events, which usually get staged as though they are once-in-a-lifetime events that we just have to be present for. History in the making, they want us to believe. The Obama fundraisers to be held this weekend are being billed as local celebrations of the president’s birthday – which was last week.

ALTHOUGH THE REALITY is that this probably won’t even be the last time in this election cycle that the candidates will ask us for our cash.

Barack Obama will have a “Happy Birthday!” if we write him out checks totaling in the millions of dollars so he can let us know how out of touch Romney is with real people.

Just as Romney will be equally pleased if we give him all those checks come Tuesday when he speaks at Acme Industries in suburban Elk Grove Village, then has two downtown fundraisers – one of which will feature manufacturing officials.

ROMNEY: Somebody must pay for nasty ads

They’re the audience who will probably buy into all the Romney rhetoric that Obama is a “subversive” who will undermine everything they like about this country.

THEY’RE CERTAINLY THE only audience that can afford to pay up to $50,000 per ticket to get into Romney events to be held in the city – although it seems that money raised will be shared by the Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee.

After all, the RNC needs money to elect allies for Romney – although I suspect what they really want is a president to be allied with a Congress of their choice. Romney as a rubber stamp.

Not that I think the Obama campaign is any different. Some people will actually get into the Obama manor at the Hyde Park/Kenwood neighborhood border, while friends Marty Nesbitt and Barbara Bowman (the latter is the mother of Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett) also will host events.

It will give us the feel that we’re getting to see the inner circle of the Obama lifestyle – if you can afford the high price of a ticket. Although we're not getting anything on the scale of the fundraiser Obama had Monday night (at the Connecticut -- as in suburban New York City -- home of televison producer Aaron Sorkin, with Catwoman-like visions of Anne Hathaway also present).

IT’S NO WONDER that some candidates who have a conscience feel like they’re “whoring” themselves out to raise money to run the campaigns that maintain their positions within government.

Do you feel the need for this?



Most of us, of course, can’t afford these kind of prices. Not that they’re really missing out on much. All political events tend to have a rehearsed quality about them. So overly staged that they bear little resemblance to reality.

Besides, I find myself very amused by the Obama campaign, which has consistently sent out e-mails to alleged supporters, asking for tiny donations and usually offering up some trinket in return. The most recent one I am aware of offers us a chance to get a genuine car magnet bearing the Obama logo.

Just $10, and it’s all yours. You can drive your car around and show your political allegiance, and three years from now you won’t have a tattered, weather-worn sticker on your bumper to remind us of whom you voted for on Nov. 6.

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