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Comment by BinaryIdiot | Hacker News Reader

> She has Obama, using tax payer money, campaigning for her - while not illegal, is pretty morally bankrupt in my opinion.

This is not actually true. While he is forced to only use Airforce One when flying he is required by law to reimburse all costs related to campaigning for anyone. Typically though the president never pays for this and, instead, the candidate they are campaigning for foots the bill.

Every single president in the history of our democracy has done this. Every single one of them.

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The NPR article linked below links a better one for discussing the history of presidents campaigning:

http://www.npr.org/2016/07/05/484817706/looking-back-at-a-ce...

McCain in 2008 and Gore in 2000 both sort of wanted the sitting president to stay out of the campaign. Bush was pretty unpopular and Clinton had a lot hanging over him (Bush left office with an approval rating around 30%, Clinton around 60%).

Reagan campaigned timidly for Bush I.

So in the last 40 years, it hasn't been very common for the sitting president to come out and campaign hard for their parties candidate. Of course they have generally campaigned for themselves, which has a similar issue of dealing with who pays for things.

I know it was a long time ago, so you were probably not considering it, but I thought the Wikiped entry for 1876 pres elections was interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...

"Because it was considered improper for a candidate to pursue the presidency actively, neither Tilden nor Hayes actively stumped as part of the campaign, leaving that job to surrogates."

My point is that it is morally void, one candidate is doing it, the other isn't. That it's been done historically has absolutely zero relevance as to whether it is a moral thing to do (see literally any example of civil rights laws progressing over the past 300 years).

> My point is that it is morally void, one candidate is doing it, the other isn't.

Huh? There is only one president...what's the problem with campaigning for someone else that you support? I don't see the moral issue. If you're paying for it and you're obviously not doing it in lieu of your duty what's the issue here?

Ok - I looked this up. DNC paid out some money when Obama used AF1. They only paid at the rate of what a regular charter jet would cost, but that makes sense. I don't have a problem with this and I rescind that particular part of my argument.

>Every single president in the history of our democracy has done this. Every single one of them.

This NPR article calls it "unusual" but maybe I am missing something since I only read it at a glance: http://www.npr.org/2016/07/07/485097272/fact-check-air-force...

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