A well-paid career -- in politics (revisited)

In case you missed it over the holiday weekend, here's a link to the in-depth analysis by Susan Milligan, national political reporter for the Boston Globe, of the business of politics. Milligan spent weeks calculating how much candidates have spent in the 2008 presidential race on professional consultants, and assessing the impact of this trend. The findings are sobering.

The article, on the front page of the Sunday Globe on Sept. 2, notes that "Hillary Clinton has already paid more than $1.3 million to 10 different types of professional political operatives to advise her on everything from media strategy to trip planning and Internet use. Her campaign hired more than 350 people during the first half of this year, making it a bigger employer than 96 percent of US businesses, according to the US Census Bureau."

Milligan argues that "in just a few election cycles, running for president of the United States has undergone a profound - and costly - change. Campaigns that once began as ideological missions driven by candidates and volunteers have been subsumed by a permanent class of professionals whose job is to keep the campaign on a carefully crafted script."

She writes:

"The 2008 race has already set new benchmarks for the use of political consultants, with two candidates - Republicans Mitt Romney and John McCain - having already spent more on consultants in six months than what the eventual 2004 nominees, John F. Kerry and George W. Bush, spent on professional advisers for their entire campaigns. But 2008 may ultimately be remembered for what all that money bought: A culture in which candidates are being instructed what to wear, what to say, where to travel, and what theme song best suits their message."

Milligan quotes Allan J. Lichtman, a presidential scholar at American University, as saying that that candidates are spending much less time thinking about "what to do in Iraq" and much more time spent thinking about "how to spin what we do in Iraq."

One candidate, Barack Obama, has already paid more than $2 million in payroll taxes alone - 50 percent more than what Bill Clinton spent on his entire campaign in 1991. And some candidates' war chests are earning significant income. "Collectively, the contenders earned more than $350,000 in bank interest on their campaign accounts for the first half of the year."