MIAMI: Obama headlined a Miami Beach dinner tonight raising money for Democratic congressional candidates. Tickets ranged from $500 to $15,200 for the event.

The chart on the left puts Obama’s campaign fund raising in perspective. Obama has attended 28 fundraisers in his first months of office, compared to Bush’s six and Clinton’s five.

The NIP believes that this adds to the evidence that this administration is all about power, protecting its prospects for reelection. How can a president spend so much time campaigning when he has a country to run? Who is minding the store back home? Biden? Somehow that is not reassuring.

Clinton and Bush spent their first months in office with their noses to the grindstone, working. If Obama is campaigning this hard this early, will he go into full time campaigning when it comes time for the congressional elections? Who will be running the country then?

Michael A. Fletcher in today’s Washington Post reports:

By day’s end, Obama will have held 28 fund raisers this year. Not counting the upcoming events, the president has raised more than $27.5 million, according to CBS radio correspondent Mark Knoller, who keeps meticulous presidential statistics. Three of the president’s events did not report how much was raised. Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post

Obama campaigned on bringing a “new civility” to Washington, ending “the same old partisan politics.” We at the NIP certainly agree that those “same old” politics are gone, apparently forever. What we have now are politics on steroids, all politics, all the time.

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