Campaigns and the people who budget them

This is why people shell out big bucks for access to NationalReview.com (decidedly not free registration required). For those who have it (and why are you reading my blog if you do), it's here. Some interesting facts about budgeting a presidential campaign:

• John Kerry has spent $47 million on overhead.
• George Bush has spent $27.5 million.
  

Why the $20 million dollar difference?

"It's a built-in advantage for the president. He gets to fly around on Air Force One every time he goes somewhere and he can give a speech -- call it official business -- and doesn't have to reimburse virtually anything (they always reimburse something) but they don't have to reimburse that much for the use of Air Force One."

"Senator Kerry has spent $20 million on travel in terms of charter jets and so forth and basic travel for his staff, whereas President Bush has spent about $4 million."

Now here's the kicker:

"The next big way that they differ is that they have very different fund raising approaches. And if you look at sort of the overall numbers so far -- and this is just through the primary season -- you're talking about fund raising outlays for Senator Kerry of about $20 million. And on the president's side of the ledger, you're talking about fund raising expenses of $50 million. So
there's a $30 million difference. Big difference."

$30 million dollars? Can you imagine just dumping that in a swing state like Florida? Let's not even mention cheaper media markets like West Virginia, Iowa, or Wisconsin. If you've already bought every available second of airtime, what about get out the vote? You could hire the margin of victory to work for you on election day. You could force your opponent to defend a state they should be taking for granted, or try to put a new state in play. A consultant with an extra $30 million dollars can have a lot of fun (think Brewster's Millions, with Richard Pryor).

When it comes to areas within his control, it looks like George W. Bush is guilty of bad financial management (or fuzzy math, as your prefer).

If Kerry wins in a squeaker (can we all agree, probably the only way he can win?), and it's $30 million dollars close, it could be because Bush either needed or wanted to raise money with expensive, fancy, black tie dinners. Seeing the Republicans lose a national presidential campaign that way is not without a certain ironic pleasure.