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Dollarocracy: Money Decisive in Costliest White House Race Ever

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They say money can’t buy you love. But if you want to live in the White House, you will need oceans of cash – and this year’s presidential election is set to go down in history as the costliest ever, in jarring contrast to the financial woes of average Americans.

WASHINGTON, November 1 (By Jaclyn O’Laughlin for RIA Novosti) - They say money can’t buy you love. But if you want to live in the White House, you will need oceans of cash – and this year’s presidential election is set to go down in history as the costliest ever, in jarring contrast to the financial woes of average Americans.

More than $2 billion has been raised in the 2012 presidential campaign, according to election officials, with around half of it being spent on political advertising alone, far surpassing all previous campaign money records.

Incumbent President Barack Obama recently acknowledged that there was something seriously wrong with the colossal sums of money being spent on this year’s presidential campaign – his own and that of his main challenger, Republican Mitt Romney.

“The amount of money that is being spent in my campaign and Mr. Romney’s campaign and the super PACs that are out there is ridiculous,” Obama said in an interview with NBC News, referring to “super-PACs” (Political Action Committees) which can now spend unlimited funds to support candidates.

The independent, non-profit Center for Responsive Politics estimated that the 2012 presidential race will cost about $2.5 billion with funds coming in from the candidates’ campaigns, the Democratic and Republican party committees and an array of outside spending groups.

The official campaign organizations for Obama and Romney have alone pulled in about $1.7 billion, according to recent fundraising reports. Also adding to the pot are the super PACs that have raised about $300 million since 2011 and nonprofit groups that have raised tens of millions of dollars more.

As of October 26, over $800 million had been spent on television, radio, and internet ads targeting voters throughout the country, particularly in “battleground” states expected to be crucial to the outcome of the race, the Washington Post reported last week.

In addition to political advertising, campaign funds are also used to pay for a variety of other election-related goods and services – campaign staff salaries, public rallies and fundraising events, to name a few – that are apparently necessary to have a realistic shot at winning the race for the White House.

"There is a lot of money being spent on advertising – it is definitely more than the gross national product of some countries in the world," said Travis Ridout, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, a watchdog group that tracks political ad spending.

Just under $27 is being spent every second – around $70 million per month – in an effort to win hearts and minds through media ads, rallies and banners, NBC News said recently.

And all of this political fundraising and spending comes as the United States struggles to cope with a 7.8 percent unemployment rate, 12.1 million Americans out of work and a generation-old stagnation in real household incomes – all issues the candidates profess to be of deep concern to them.
"Political advertising in one sense is an arms race,” Ridout said. “You don't want to be outspent by your opponent because then they could have an advantage."

The result of the frenzied getting and spending at the heart of American politics, critics say, is simple: Control of the country belongs not to the smartest ideas and certainly not to the citizens themselves but simply to the highest bidder.

“Our government is literally for sale, and there's no excuse for it,” Michael Hogan, arts and entertainment editor for The Huffington Post Media Group, wrote recently in a commentary on The Huffington Post news website.

“We're far too rich and powerful and well-educated to stand for this banana-republic nonsense.”

Close to one million presidential campaign ads have aired on broadcast and national cable television since the general election period started, bombarding Americans with 44.5 percent more ads than the 637,000 ads that aired in 2008, according to a Wesleyan Media Project study released last week.

While Obama has aired 515,921 ads, slightly more than Romney's 465,202, Ridout said the ads have actually started to cancel each other out and that there is "not one place where one candidate has advantage over the other" and "the effect of so many ads is to not move many people at all."

"There is not much movement seen in the polls when the ads are neck-and-neck," he said. "Situations when you don't know much about a candidate, that is when advertising can have an impact, but at this state in the game there isn't much more for people to learn."

This presidential election is the first one to occur after the January 2010 Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, that allows corporations, unions and issue advocacy organizations to spend unlimited amounts of money in support of or opposition to a candidate, as long as the spending is done independently of any candidate’s campaign.

The ruling in this case led to the creation of super PACs and the growth of outside spending groups that are not required to disclose their donors, paving the way to unlimited independent spending, the Center for Responsive Politics website stated.

Another key reason both candidates have been able to raise so much money is that both politicians, for the first time in history, have chosen to opt out of the public financing system, which sets limits on how much money candidates can spend or raise.

Michael E. Toner, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, said in a phone interview that he is struck by the astronomical amounts of money raised in the presidential campaign, but that "no campaign manager ever feels like they have enough money no matter how much they have."

“There is a real sense this is a 50-50 politically divided country, and literally every last thousand dollars you raise could make the difference in winning the presidential race," said Toner.

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