The 2008 Presidential elections were a landslide for Barack Obama and a very historic moment for most Americans who saw this as a milestone.

In America, the main issue with campaign finance for political leaders is the huge amount of money that presidential elections cost.

For example, it is estimated that the elections ended up costing up to a trillion dollars, and possibly more.

Much of that money was spent on advertising and some of it was spent on attacking the other candidate's integrity so that the American public can determine which candidate they will vote for.

In the 2008 presidential election, it was quite obvious that much was at stake for both candidates.

The largest amount of money spent during the elections was on negatively portraying opposing candidates in a light that was not suitable for the American presidency.

The election was an all-out brawl that showed that fair play was not important in American presidential politics, only the desire to win and to win at any cost.

ROLE OF THE LOBBYISTS

The lobbyists are the ones who work behind the scenes to push money under the table to candidates so that when the candidate wins the election, they can get special political favors to satisfy their sponsor's selfish purposes.

These lobbyists also have much to do with raising money for certain organizations that run the integrity attack campaigns against the opponents of their chosen political candidate.

During the campaign battle, Obama was accused of fraudulent property deals with an individual who went to jail, while McCain was accused of having close relationships with lobbyists.

WHAT ABOUT THE ISSUES?

During the 2008 Presidential elections, the issues took a back seat as the candidates primarily criticized each other. Even during debates the candidates could not seem to help but point out each other's flaws instead of directing their attention toward the issues that the voters wanted to hear their thoughts on.

For the most part, Obama and McCain agreed on more of the issues than they disagreed, so the election was largely a matter of which candidate the voters choose to vote for.

Sarah Palin came in as McCain's running mate and created a media frenzy that became a short-term distraction until everything settled down so that people could listen to where she stood on the issues.

Nevertheless, Sarah Palin always seemed to attract something of a media side show that tended to overwhelm her rhetoric on the major issues.

DIRTY MONEY?

No one seems willing to take responsibility of any kind for the corruption or fraud that exists in a Presidential campaign.

President Obama used his online portal to raise campaign capital to go up against Senator McCain, and his strategy worked.

He has since not been held accountable for revealing where these funds came from because many of them were from anonymous sources, raising concerns that many were in fact dirty money with political strings attached.

Furthermore, money spent to finance Presidential campaigns primarily serves to target personal issues that have nothing to do with the campaign or what policy issues the American people are really interested in.

As a result of dirty campaign money, American presidents can be bought well before they even take office by those wealthy elitists and large corporations who can afford to pay the high price for a puppet president whose strings they can pull at will.