Barack Obama Quotes

Well I think money has been going into political campaigns for a very long time.

In political advertising, truth only has an advantage when a credible source makes it known.

The degree to which campaigns have become dominated by marketing is breaking the spirit of democracy, and we're all just so sick of it, across party lines.

Once you give a politician five minutes of free airtime, he’s going to go somewhere else and spend the money he saved at your station.

It [television] has locked candidates into ridiculous positions because only ridiculous positions can be compacted into 30-second commercials.

Every American knows that political campaigns are too long and too expensive.

Public [campaign] financing and free television time are the things that will diminish the high influence that money has on politics.

The most misguided, naïve, uninformed, egregious decision of the United States Supreme Court … in the 21st century. To somehow view money as not having a corrupting effect on an election flies in the face of reality. I just think that just one of the five had run for county sheriff. I guarantee you … there will be scandals. There is too much money washing around political campaigns today, and it will take scandals and maybe the Supreme Court will go back and revisit this issue

Increasingly, campaigns treat the fact-checkers not as arbitrators who must be heeded, but as participants in the ever-roiling political tussle.

Until we totally change the way we elect our leaders, until we remove private money from public campaigns, lying will be the de facto method of governance in this country.

I think there's a lot of reasons for having an extended primary. I think super PACs play a role.

Unfortunately, money in politics is an insidious thing - and a loophole in our campaign finance system was taken advantage of with money going to existing or new 527 groups with the sole purpose of influencing the election.

I think we have to look at the whole way campaigns are financed. The No. 1 problem is PAC and special-interest money.

You know, I respect what Howard Dean has been able to do. It's good for our party. But I've got to tell you this: If money alone decided presidential nominations, Phil Gramm would have been nominated in '96.

I also do not like the idea of soft money, these issue ads - people don't know where the money is coming from, millions and millions of dollars outside of the control of a candidate - there's no accountability.

I do a lot of referendums. They can't talk back. They don't have wives. They don't have friends who tell you how to run the campaign. They are supported by special interests, so there's a lot of money in them.

Few developments in campaigning have been as vilified and misunderstood as independent expenditure PACs, or, as they are colloquially known, super PACs.

What we Americans go through to pick a president is not only crazy and unnecessary but genuinely abusive. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent in a craven, cynical effort to stir up hatred and anger on both sides.

I don't think politicians should be allowed to take money for their campaigns from outside interests.

All elections revolve around and are often resolved by who raises the most money. That's unfair. I'd like to see that process changed, but it seems once you win and get to Congress, that doesn't happen.

In addition to being extremely expensive, and we have to put up with the stupidities that the candidates repeat, it's really being decided elsewhere who will sit in the presidential seat.

I have introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and make it clear that the Congress and state legislatures do have the ability and the power to regulate and get corporate funding out of political campaigns.

When governments rely increasingly on sophisticated public relations agencies, public debate disappears and is replaced by competing propaganda campaigns, with all the accompanying deceits. Advertising isn't about truth or fairness or rationality, but about mobilising deeper and more primitive layers of the human mind.

There is literally no such thing as an idea that cannot be expressed well and articulately to today's voters in 30 seconds.

Politics ... is going to be diluted down into a 10-second window, where you whack the guy as hard as you can and then get out of there.