WELCOME: Mayor Emanuel giving his speech at the reception for the participants.
CHICAGO, Illinois: The re-election of President Barack Obama last week continues to become hot topic in his hometown of Chicago.
Roosevelt University professor Paul Green paid tribute to Obama’s campaign team which he described as ‘the best political machine’ ever.
He said the team, dubbed the Obama Machine, was much more organised and efficient than the team for the defeated Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
The Obama Machine, he pointed out, fully utilised social media tools as they did in 2008 and also ran effective TV advertisements especially in the battleground states to woo voters away from voting Romney.
“This has got to be the most costly election probably in the world with over $2 billion believed to be spent.
“It made most TV stations wealthy with the amount of advertisements from both sides. Obama’s campaign was most
organised, of upmost brilliance.
Romney’s campaign was very traditional, talking about jobs and economy,” he said during the 2012 Presidential Election & Campaign dialogue with participants of the Edward R Murrow Project For Journalists here.
He explained that Obama’s campaign had been effective in running negative ads related to Romney’s past.
Although Obama will not be running for president again in 2016, he believed the election four years from now will again be an expensive contest between the Democrats and the Republicans.
Meanwhile, another political analyst Bruce Dumont said the heated Republican primaries affected Romney’s presidential campaign.
He also believed that the selection of Paul Ryan as Romney’s running mate was a mistake due to controversies related to
him.
“The Hurricane Sandy, in a way also helped Obama and it came at a right time with media coverage following the president visiting the victims and affected areas. The momentum with Romney stopped,” he said.
The programme in Chicago was the last leg of the three-week Edward R Murrow programme involving journalists from 132 countries.
Illinois Governor Pat Quinn officiated at the event last Wednesday during which he told the audience that the state is the home of great presidents namely Obama, Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln as well as the birthplace of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel was the guest of honour at the network reception held later in the evening. Quinn and Emanuel are Democrats.
The participating journalists had started leaving for their respective countries on Friday and Saturday, after a programme which saw them visiting various locations in the US.