Money for Millionaires

Okay, it's true that campaign contributions are worth more than votes. Campaign cash is now used like a battering ram to bully the other players into submission.

I've been getting a lot of e-mail asking me to make end of quarter contributions to various political candidates and PACs. I'll never give a dime to a candidate. Never have, never will. I volunteered for Dean, but that was different. Contributors and the campaign itself paid my way, and they got their money's worth. But give to powerfully connected millionaires? Not gonna happen. I just can't see these guys as charities.

It's just another kind of horse race that Americans really go for. They even seem to respect a candidate's ability to raise money. Has his keeping close on the fund-raising coattails of Hillary Clinton made Barack Obama a legitimate candidate at last?

That would be sad.

Because that is the kind of cigar-chomping cash that made George W. Bush a legitimate candidate.

If we really want campaign finance reform, if we really want better candidates and a government changed for the better, then giving boat loads of cash to candidates, in record amounts a year and a half before the election, is not the way to do it.