In one day, Obama is $5 million man

US: US President Barack Obama, juggling dual roles as fundraiser extraordinaire and commander-in-chief, piled up a cool five million dollars in a lucrative single-day campaign blitz.

In no other country is a leader expected to tend to a deteriorating war he is leading in Afghanistan on the same day as conducting the business of stuffing millions into his war chest to bankroll his own political career.

But such is the cost of running for president in America, where campaign teams play on a vast and complex political map, building expensive grass roots get-out-the-vote networks and million-dollar advertising blasts.

Obama started Friday in Washington, in the early hours, trying to talk President Hamid Karzai down from his fresh broadside at America’s war strategy, as the Afghan leader fumes after a US soldier apparently launched a rampage killing 16 civilians.

Later Obama was aboard Air Force One as it nosed into murky skies over Washington, heading to a five-event, two-city, 1700-mile (2,700-kilometer) odyssey of fund-raisers in a vast hotel ballroom, a huge film studio, and intimate living room setting.

Going home to Chicago for four hours, Obama amassed $2.1 million, first giving a pep talk to 600 loyal supporters -- who paid at least $2,500 a head -- in a ballroom under glistening chandeliers.

Obama’s mission: inspire the hoards who gathered at his 2008 victory rally in a nearby park to sign up to fight one more battle. “As much as 2008 was exciting and as much as all of us, I think, saw that night in Grant Park as the culmination of something -- it was actually just the beginning of what we are fighting for,” Obama said.

“That is what 2012 is about. I know it’s been a tough few years, I know that when you see what’s going on in Washington sometimes it is tempting to believe that what we believed in in 2008 was an illusion.

AFP