Perspective: Campaign spending

[Pam]

"The Center for Responsive Politics calculates that, by Election Day, $2.4 billion will have been spent on presidential campaigns in the two-year election cycle that began in January 2007, and an additional $2.9 billion will have been spent on 435 House and 35 Senate contests. This $5.3 billion is a billion less than Americans will spend this year on potato chips."

Ugh. Potato chips???

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...03199.html

[MacGurl]

Astounding, on all counts!

Kathy

[freeradical]

Yep. People love to use absolute numbers when they're trying to lie with statistics. The cost of financing a Senate or Presidential run is often compared to some time in the past with absolute numbers, and the difference is indeed large. However, if you calculate the annualized growth rate between the two given dates, you'll generally find that it's the same as the annualized inflation rate between the two dates given.

[cbelt3]

Free-
It's still astounding that candidates spend hundreds to thousands of times the effective salary of their putative position in order to gain the position. It's obvious that the 'salary' that we, the taxpayers, pay them is meaningless.

[incognegro]

they do it for the perks & the power, not the pay.

[the_poochies]

I've worked on dozens of campaigns over the years. Campaigns are expensive because:

1. Purchasing TV time
2. Purchasing TV time
3. Purchasing TV time

I'm no big proponent of campaign finance "reform" but that's a different thread for another day.

[$tevie]

I think the paragraph before that one is interesting. Perhaps the whole "public financing" concept should be abandoned. It certainly hasn't impressed me at all.

One excellent result of this election cycle is that public financing of presidential campaigns now seems sillier than ever. The public has always disliked it: Voluntary and cost-free participation, using the check-off on the income tax form, peaked at 28.7 percent in 1980 and has sagged to 9.2 percent. The Post, which is melancholy about the system's parlous condition, says there were three reasons for creating public financing: to free candidates from the demands of fundraising, to level the playing field and "to limit the amount of money pouring into presidential campaigns." The first reason is decreasingly persuasive because fundraising is increasingly easy because of new technologies such as the Internet. The second reason is, the Supreme Court says, constitutionally impermissible. Government may not mandate equality of resources among political competitors who earn different levels of voluntary support. As for the third reason -- "huge amounts" (McCain) of money "pouring into" (The Post) presidential politics -- well:

The Center for Responsive Politics calculates that, by Election Day, $2.4 billion will have been spent on presidential campaigns in the two-year election cycle that began in January 2007, and an additional $2.9 billion will have been spent on 435 House and 35 Senate contests. This $5.3 billion is a billion less than Americans will spend this year on potato chips.

[Silencio]

The above was quoted from George Will's column today, BTW:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...03199.html

[mikeylikesit]

$tevie wrote:
I think the paragraph before that one is interesting. Perhaps the whole "public financing" concept should be abandoned. It certainly hasn't impressed me at all.

That might be because it never had a chance. it was opposed from day one by monied interests who sought and bought loopholes in an attempt to 1.) gain advantage 2.) sink the sucker.

It's not unlike turning the administration of government programs over to people who think those programs shouldn't even exist because as they will enough soon show you they don't work.

Sure enough the programs didn't work.

[vicrock]

Not to mention the fact that every one of the candidates - going back to before the primaries - has a JOB that s/he is being paid to do and is not because they are off gallivanting all over the country campaigning.

I'm afraid if one of my elected representatives did this while in office, I'd be WAY annoyed.