For the first time in four months, Obama’s campaign raised more money than Romney’s for the month of August, with a final total of $114 million for the incumbent and $111 million for Romney. BusinessWeek’s headline for the article relaying this information described Obama as “squeaking out a fundraising victory.” We’re in an election where $3 million is an extremely narrow margin.
The Center for Responsive Politics says that over a billion dollars will be spent in this presidential election, leaving in the dust the Obama v. McCain election four years ago. The Koch brothers, conservative billionaire businessmen, alone have donated more money to Romney’s cause than John McCain spent on his entire campaign.
The 2008 election cost nearly 150 percent of the previous Bush v. Kerry election. Bush v. Kerry cost nearly twice what Bush v. Gore cost four years prior. You can see the trend: these elections are getting more and more ridiculously expensive.
But what good does it really do? We are told over and over by the media and the campaigns themselves that money could really be the deciding factor in this election. Obama sent out an email recently to supporters that said, “The gap is getting wider, and if it continues at this pace, it could cost us the election…We can win a race in which the other side spends more than we do, but not this much more.” Romney did the same thing, saying, “We must show real progress tonight and redouble our efforts…That’s why my campaign launched the ‘Game On’ Moneybomb, and why we need your help right now.” All this sort of talk scares voters into donating money for fear their candidate will lose.
But really, a few extra million dollars here and there does not make much of a difference. In a study by economist Steven Levitt, it was shown that if a candidate doubles spending, then he only gets an extra percentage point of the popular vote. This suggests that money doesn’t really cause a candidate to win, but that candidates who are most likely to win tend to attract a lot of money.
Of course, this is skewed more than ever in this year’s election with all the corporate, big-donor money coming into the race. Big donors have been especially attracted to Romney’s campaign and have donated accordingly, making his fundraising totals much higher than Obama’s generally. An article published at the end of last month in the New Yorker describes how disgruntled big donors are toward Obama because of his aversion to schmooze.
Political advisors on both sides of the aisle admit that the large majority of this money ends up being wasted, but the problem is that they don’t know which ads and strategies will end up being a waste. So they do absolutely everything they can. The result is an American public inundated with political propaganda so fiercely that the whole election becomes a huge circus act. The candidates do their tricks and bend over backward for a few extra votes, but in the end it is all just a big flashy joke.
What we really need to do is remove all this poisonous money from the campaign process. Force the candidates to actually get creative and talk about the issues instead of focusing on mudslinging and petty squabbling.
Think of what could have been done with the billion dollars that will be spent on this election. They could have given grants to schools or funded infrastructure projects or invested in alternative energy or given small business loans. But being economically prudent is just not the American way.
— Lindsay Lee is a junior in mathematics. She can be reached at [email protected].
