Intimate Dining with Obama?

Are you looking for some extended face time with Barack Obama? Well, you may be in luck. He's running a contest offering what he's calling "an intimate dinner" with four supporters who make a contribution of at least five dollars to his campaign by Wednesday, June 13. Obama's campaign page doesn't offer many details, but local TV reporter Andy Shaw has more information. Apparently there were 8,000 new contributions the first day of the contest. There are still a few kinks to work out of the contest. According to Shaw, "The dinner will be at a nice restaurant in Chicago or Washington later this summer." I love that place! But I'll have to check my availability for the date. I suppose the point is the time with Obama rather than specifically when or where that meeting takes place, but a bit more specificity wouldn't hurt. (For what it's worth, Obama once taped an episode of the Chicago restaurant review TV show, Check Please. It was back when he was in the Illinois legislature, and as far as I know the episode never aired, but for what it's worth, his restaurant of choice was Dixie Kitchen & Bait Shop in Hyde Park.) According to Shaw, the campaign hasn't yet figured out how they're going to choose the lucky winners, but they guarantee that it won't be based on the size of the contribution.

This is actually a clever way of raising money. In fact, Mitt Romney liked the idea so much he took it as his own. He's shifted a little bit, bumping the minimum contribution to $100 and making it a Major League Baseball game rather than dinner. One advantage of this is that Mitt doesn't necessarily have to have a conversation with the winners, he can just keep watching the game. The implication for the governor of Massachusetts, of course, is that it would be a game at Fenway, but he doesn't actually say that. Since he's a Republican, it's probably wise not to simply assume. The good thing for me about going with Mitt to a Red Sox game, though, would be that I wouldn't have to pay any attention to him, either.