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By Root 1541 0

has shown the satisfaction and influence that a life after politics can bring, and I suspect the executive is eagerly taking the former vice president’s calls once again. Still, in the aftermath of his 2000 loss, I imagine Gore would have sensed the change in his friend. Sitting there, pitching his television idea, trying to make the best of a bad situation, he might have thought how ridiculous were the circumstances in which he found himself; how after a lifetime of work he could have lost it all because of a butterfly ballot that didn’t align, while his friend the executive, sitting across from him with the condescending smile, could afford to come in second in his business year after year, maybe see his company’s stock tumble or make an ill-considered investment, and yet still be considered successful, still enjoy the pride of accomplishment, the lavish compensation, the exercise of power. It wasn’t fair, but that wouldn’t change the facts for the former vice president. Like most men and women who followed the path of public life, Gore knew what he was getting himself into the moment he decided to run. In politics, there may be second acts, but there is no second place.

MOST OF THE other sins of politics are derivative of this larger sin—the need to win, but also the need not to lose. Certainly that’s what the money chase is all about. There was a time, before campaign finance laws and snooping reporters, when money shaped politics through outright bribery; when a politician could treat his campaign fund as his personal bank account and accept fancy junkets; when big honoraria from those who sought influence were commonplace, and the shape of legislation went to the highest bidder. If recent news reports are accurate, these ranker forms of corruption have not gone away entirely; apparently there are still those in Washington who view politics as a means of getting rich, and who, while generally not dumb enough to accept bags of small bills, are perfectly prepared to take care of contributors and properly feather their beds until the time is finally ripe to jump into the lucrative practice of lobbying on behalf of those they once regulated.

More often, though, that’s not the way money influences politics. Few lobbyists proffer an explicit quid pro quo to elected officials. They don’t have to. Their influence comes simply from having more access to those officials than the average voter, having better information than the average voter, and having more staying power when it comes to promoting an obscure provision in the tax code that means billions for their clients and that nobody else cares about.

As for most politicians, money isn’t about getting rich. In the Senate, at least, most members are already rich. It’s about maintaining status and power; it’s about scaring off challengers and fighting off the fear. Money can’t guarantee victory—it can’t buy passion, charisma, or the ability to tell a story. But without money, and the television ads that consume all the money, you are pretty much guaranteed to lose.

The amounts of money involved are breathtaking, particularly in big state races with multiple media markets. While in the state legislature, I never needed to spend more than $100,000 on a race; in fact, I developed a reputation for being something of a stick-in-the-mud when it came to fund-raising, coauthoring the first campaign finance legislation to pass in twenty-five years, refusing meals from lobbyists, rejecting checks from gaming and tobacco interests. When I decided to run for the U.S. Senate, my media consultant, David Axelrod, had to sit me down to explain the facts of life. Our campaign plan called for a bare-bones budget, a heavy reliance on grassroots support and “earned media”—that is, an ability to make our own news. Still, David informed me that one week of television advertising in the Chicago media market would cost approximately half a million dollars. Covering the rest of the state for a week would run about $250,000. Figuring four weeks of TV, and all the overhead and staff for a statewide