| Description | Back when Rudy Giuliani was a presidential candidate, he used to knock his Senate rivals, in both parties, for never having “run” anything. People like John McCain and Barack Obama, Giuliani said, had been lawmakers, not executives.
Now, as it turns out, the public didn’t much care, and voters in both parties for the first time in U.S. history nominated sitting senators to face off in the general election.
But in some ways, Giuliani’s criticism underestimated something: Obama is effectively the CEO of a massive national enterprise, with a huge budget and enormous staff.
Behind the headlines about the unprecedented success of Democrat Barack Obama’s fund-raising machine lies a more prosaic truth — his campaign will need every penny of its $300 million goal to bankroll an unprecedented 50-state general election campaign with a massive army on the ground.
His campaign already has by far the largest full-time paid staff in presidential campaign history, and unlike Republican rival John McCain’s, continues to grow by the day.
National polls show the race remains close between Obama and McCain, but the Obama campaign is paying closer attention to polls in more than a dozen states that show Obama has a chance of winning in November. The states were won four years ago by President Bush, in many cases by huge margins. In theory, at least, Obama’s effort could nudge states such as Virginia, Indiana, and North Dakota into the Democratic column and produce a surprising Electoral College boost. […]
Obama, meanwhile, is already running uncontested television advertising in seven of the historically Republican states and is sending in large paid staffs. |
