Money is this campaign's real hallmark

Maybe the presidential candidates are making headlines with their half-truths and whole lies and dodging sniper fire and striving to become the first black/female/oldest president, but the real hallmark of this campaign is none of the above.

It's money.

"The amount of money being spent is obscene," says Dan Jones, the renowned Utah-based pollster who has monitored every presidential campaign since 1962.

For instance, Obama has raised a total of $237 million since he began his campaign, smashing the previous record of $185.6 million raised by President Bush in 2004. And we've still got eight months to go.

How much money is that? Let's put it this way: You could buy a pretty good outfielder with that moola.

According to Kirk Jowers, director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics, if a candidate wants to raise $100 million in a year, he or she must raise $250,000 every day — or, in other words, collect five of the legal maximum $2,300 individual contributions every single hour of every single day, including weekends, for one year.

Keeping that in mind, in 2007 Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama raised a combined total of $208 million from individual contributors.

The three Republican candidates — John McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee — raised $99 million last year, bringing the total of the five candidates to $307 million raised from individual donors (not counting loans and transfers).

In a way, the man they seek to replace in the White House has only himself to blame. President Bush started it all. From 1976 to 2000, every major party nominee accepted public funding, which meant candidates were legally limited as to how much money they could raise and spend on their own.

In 2000, Bush decided not to accept public financing for the primary election, figuring he could raise much more than the almost $50 million the federal government was offering. He was right and then some. He raised more than $110 million — more than double the public funding that Democratic rival Al Gore had at his disposal.

Thus the floodgates were opened.

In 2004, none of the major presidential candidates accepted public financing for the primary election. John Kerry and Bush each raised some $260 million.