Schedule for September 25th presidential visit to Seattle starts to take shape

Although the White House has yet to offi­cial­ly con­firm that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is com­ing to Seat­tle in two and a half weeks, we already have a pret­ty good idea of what his sched­ule will be like while he’s here.

That’s because his cam­paign has been busy try­ing to inter­est local Democ­rats with at least $1,000 to spare to attend one of two pricey fundrais­ing events.

One will be a brunch in the afflu­ent sub­urb of Med­i­na, home to Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates and his wife Melin­da. Jon Shirley, who served with Gates at Microsoft, will be the host of the event, which costs $35,800 per couple.

An invi­ta­tion obtained by the Seat­tle P‑I’s Joel Con­nel­ly tout­ed the brunch as a chance for wealthy cou­ples to enjoy an inti­mate meal with the president:

For­mat: Max­i­mum of 50 cou­ples — and the for­mat is going to be amaz­ing: infor­mal remarks and then Q & A from the audi­ence! He’s then do a pho­to line or can­did pho­tos (going around to all the tables). They’re still decid­ing the latter.

The oth­er event that Oba­ma is doing is an 11:30 AM lunch at the Para­mount The­ater in Seat­tle, catered by renowned local chef Tom Dou­glas. A plate at that lunch can be had for a min­i­mum con­tri­bu­tion of $1,000. “VIP seat­ing” costs anoth­er $1,500 (for a total of $2,500) and get­ting into the pho­to line costs $7,500.

Oba­ma will like­ly also do a third event — a so-called pub­lic event — to jus­ti­fy billing the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States for his jour­ney to Seat­tle, which will actu­al­ly just be one stop on a longer West Coast fundrais­ing jaunt.

(The term “pub­lic event” is some­what of a mis­nomer since it prob­a­bly won’t be open to the pub­lic. “Offi­cial event” would be more accurate).

This trip will be Oba­ma’s third vis­it to the Ever­green State since becom­ing pres­i­dent; he was in Seat­tle twice last year on behalf of Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray. It would be nice if the pres­i­dent was com­ing here to do more than just make an ATM with­draw­al, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, no time has been left for any­thing else.

Oba­ma will at least hold a token offi­cial event and allow a pool reporter to observe the fundrais­ing events, which is more than his pre­de­ces­sor George W. Bush did. Bush’s vis­its real­ly were about Repub­li­can fundrais­ers and absolute­ly noth­ing else.

To us, Oba­ma’s vis­it is just anoth­er reminder that the Belt­way has changed him more than he has changed it.

If we ever want our pol­i­tics to revolve around some­thing oth­er than mon­ey, we’re going to have to orga­nize to over­turn some very mis­guid­ed Supreme Court deci­sions which posit that cor­po­ra­tions are peo­ple and mon­ey is speech.