• USA Today, Tuesday, October 23, 2012 8 AM

Contributor Michael Wolff writes that the big question with the election is where did the $4 billion that paid for it come from? He says the solution to the corrupting influence of cash isn't to limit it since it will seep like some toxic muck into the process anyway, but to make it cheaper to run campaigns (kind of a version of the "legalize it" argument as a solution to the nefarious drug wars). "Sure, rich men have disproportionate political power and opportunities. But the savvy way to deal with this may not be to try to eliminate the money — virtually everybody's proscription — but to eliminate television, or at least, its cost. The principal problem may not be rich men trying to buy influence, but television's ability to game the system." 

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