War chest?

Reader question:

Please explain “war chest” in the following passage:

Getting a boost from independent voters and adding to her advantage among women, Democrat Hillary Clinton has opened an 8-point lead over Republican Donald Trump in Florida’s critical presidential contest, a new poll shows.

The bottom line for the Republican Party’s presumptive candidate is that he had only US$1.2 million cash on hand at the end of May to help get himself elected, compared to Hillary Clinton’s war chest of US$42 million.

My comments:

Here, “war chest” refers to money Hillary Clinton has received from donors to be used as campaign funds, to be spent on travelling round the country and TV advertising and so forth.

According to the above report, not only is Clinton leading Donald Trump in the polls, she also outperforms her Republican presidential rival in campaign funding – and by a huge margin. That’s a clear sign that Trump is, pardon the pun, to get trumped in the race for the White House.

Everything else aside, Clinton is a woman and there has never been a woman to rule the Oval Office – that alone should make Clinton’s presidency a worthy symbol for change and hope, following the footstep of Barack Obama, the first black man elected to the highest public office.

Well, obviously voters eventually will demand more than a good symbol, but at least Clinton is a good start.

Anyways, back to war chest. The war chest is originally a box (chest) for carrying a soldier’s guns and bullets. Like the old-style trunk, which is made of wood and leather, the war chest is very tough and endurable. As all travelers in the past carry a trunk, the professional soldier used to have his war chest ready before he goes out to the battlefield.

Hence, by extension, if one has a big war chest, it signifies that he has great firepower in terms more guns and ammunition.

The bigger the better, obviously, since going to war cost a lot of money – both today and mediaeval times, when “war chest” came into vogue.

Today, though, war chest’s usage has expanded from military expenditure to business and politics, standing for money reserved for a particular purpose. In business for example, a company may accumulate a war chest for buying off rivals or fending them off.

In political campaigns, war chest is synonymous with campaign funds, money a candidate receives from donors to be used as future campaign expenses.

In any case, use “war chest” in situations where there is hostility and confrontation, rivalry and competition, if not direct military faceoff.

After all, if there is no war, what is a war chest for?

All right, here are recent media examples of “war chest”:

1. The Chancellor set aside a war chest of £1 billion to cover the cost of any military action against Iraq in yesterday’s Pre-Budget Report in the most tangible sign of the Government’s preparedness to go to war.

The announcement came as senior defence sources said that the Government was stepping up the talk of war to keep up the pressure on Saddam Hussein to abide by the United Nations resolution on weapons inspections.

The size of the contingency fund also appeared to confirm that the Government was looking at the largest end of the options available to it despite reported attempts by Gordon Brown to cut the size of any deployment to save costs.

Defence sources had said that the Ministry of Defence’s projected budget of about £1.5 billion for military action and a post-war occupation force led Mr Brown to suggest that plans to deploy a “light” British armoured division should be dropped.

But although the size of the war chest, which Mr Brown said was for Britain’s “international defence responsibilities”, is not likely to be enough, it is probably the most the MoD could have hoped for.

- A billion for the war chest, Telegraph.co.uk, November 38, 2002.

2. Evolve IP, backed by newly raised private equity funding, has a $100 million war chest for potential acquisitions. The cloud services provider, based near Philadelphia, is speaking with about six to eight IT service providers at the moment and mulling potential acquisitions, CEO Thomas J. Gravina confirmed to ChannelE2E.

As part of the M&A discussions, “we’re spending a lot of time and energy on culture,” Gravina adds. “Sure, we’re very interested in their products and services. But business culture — where Millennials and Gen X have authority, responsibility and autonomy — is very important to us.”

Evolve IP, a ChannelE2E 100 company for 2016, has acquired seven businesses over the past eight years. Roughly six months ago, the company reached an inflection point. “All of our [key performance] indicators are strong,” says Gravina. “But you get to a point in the business and you ask — ‘What do we really need to accelerate this?’ We think the cloud opportunity going forward is really substantial. The only way to accelerate it was to access significant capital.”

- Evolve IP’s $100 million war chest for MSP, CSP acquisitions, ChannelE2E.com, May 13, 2016.

3. Donald Trump’s campaign budget was widely mocked on Tuesday as figures showed him paying his own companies and children while raising far less money than his rival for the US presidency, Hillary Clinton.

The businessman lavished nearly $1m on hats, pens, T-shirts, mugs and stickers last month but has not run a TV advert since he effectively secured the Republican nomination on 4 May. His minimal social media effort is led by his own bombastic tweeting.

Trump spent $6.7m in May, filings released by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show. He spent more than $423,000 on facility rental and catering at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, and another $350,000 on travel air on Tag Air, the holding company that owns Trump’s jet.

In total, roughly one-fifth of Trump’s expenditures in May went to his own companies or in reimbursements to Trump’s children. His son Eric’s wine company received nearly $4,000.

And buried in the financial report was $35,000 in payments to a mysterious entity called “Draper Sterling” for “web advertising”, a reference that raised questions and caused mirth on social media because of its similarity to Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, the fictional advertising agency in the TV drama Mad Men.

Trump’s campaign war chest is dwarfed by that of rival Hillary Clinton, representing one of the biggest financial mismatches in presidential election history.

- Trump’s woeful $1.3m campaign war chest dwarfed by Clinton’s $42.5m, TheGuardian.com, June 21, 2016.

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.