Archived Writing

<< back to the search results

Uncovered: Color of money, with white highlights

Thursday, October 23, 2008

THOUGH BOTH PRESIDENTIAL campaigns’ media-assaults are built upon the selling-line of “Change!”, it's not just world-weary news analysts who see that “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose” is a better way to describe the contest, especially when it comes to that old lubricant of politics, filthy lucre.

A financial reporting exercise conducted every four years, this time most swiftly and with some necessary extra attention to detail by the New York Times (but also followed up by the Indianapolis Star, Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, each emphasizing their home state angles) has revealed a simple “same old, same old” truth very reminiscent of previous campaign cycles.

 

For all Barack Obama’s much-vaunted and unprecedented, indeed astonishing, success in fundraising, by getting legions of people to make small donations almost entirely via the Web, the undeniable and all-too-familiar truth is that big, five- or six-figure donations have also ballooned to enormous proportions. (They’re allowed by what the NY Times called “the fine print” of campaign finance laws, on grounds of benefitting party as well as candidate. Obama has raised nearly $150 million since January by these means, through so-called "joint fundraising committees", and John McCain has raised rather more.)

 

It should come as no surprise that these “individual” contributions flow largely from people employed in the financial services sector, with names like Bear Stearns, Lehmann Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs happening to figure prominently. These last two divide separately, and intriguingly, in favor of - respectively - McCain and Obama. I’ve a feeling the Goldman guys are the savvier investors, as oftentimes.

 

So big money always talks, and it continues to talk loudest (as it always did) during a presidential campaign. And during a presidential campaign when there’s suddenly $700 billion to be divvied up from a federal bail-out fund for the business sector, it positively screams – even if mainly behind the scenes.  

 

   

   

**A RADIO DISCUSSION OF THIS COLUMN AIRS EVERY WEEK ON CONNECTICUT'S NPR STATION, WHDD (ROBIN HOOD RADIO) - Fridays at 7.35 am, and Saturdays at 4.45 pm.**

 

Listen to THE MEDIA BEAT podcasts by clicking HERE.

 

  

FEW IMAGES SAY “MONEY” so pointedly as a fella dressed in white tie. The candidates both cut quite impressive, rich-looking figures (above, left and center) at last week’s annual Al Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, when they delivered their now virally-consumed comic turns, still playing on many a desktop video-platform. Obama looked the more dashing, I felt, just as his stand-up timing was sharper. (With the outfit, at least, height and slenderness certainly help a lot.)

 

It can, however, be a sensitive kind of oh-so-recognizable uniform, as evidenced by Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown – who’s now making headway out of his personal political doldrums by getting credit for spearheading Europe’s interventionist bank-rescue plans (and earning early praise for it from, the new Nobel Economics Prizewinner and left-leaning columnist Paul Krugman, and only this morning from uber-capitalist Steve Forbes, of Forbes Magazine and earlier presidential runs). 

 

Brown was decried by conservative-minded critics when, as his country’s equivalent of Treasury Secretary (that quaint job-title, Chancellor of the Exchequer) he refused for ten years to wear the traditional garb during his annual address at London’s Guildhall, in the city’s supposedly high-toned financial district.

 

But since ascending to the nation’s top leadership position Brown has reconsidered his own dress code (pictured above right) and now happily - I presume - dons white tie and tails at Guildhall occasions, and others.

 

The costume certainly fits right in at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (where the best Obama gag for me was: “from the doorstep you can see all the way to the Russian Tea Room”). But the hotel’s image as the home of grasping capitalists, complete during its original days (the "Gilded Age" of robber barons) with a silk scarf and top hat just like on a Monopoly board, is unfortunately taking its time to die out in today's world.  Indeed, some tacky unreported dealings went on backstage at the Al Smith dinner.

 

As principal organizer of the event, the Catholic Archdiocese of New York had been pleasantly surprised by the cordiality of the rival teams of handlers while planning the evening, both toward their host and between each other (which was far from the case, I’m told, in previous presidential contest years). But in complete contrast, the Archdiocese is still wincing at its treatment by the management of this top-notch venue, notably the gouging “extras” that were charged.

 

For the overflow room where the press was housed, the Waldorf wanted an additional $2,500 just to supply an internet connection, and billed the Archdiocese an insupportable $47 per head for the meager sandwich that each of the 60 media operatives was allowed.

 

The church staffers were outraged by the hotel’s crass determination to maximize revenue overall that day. It insisted the ballroom had to be fully occupied by an earlier, daytime renter (for a conference) right up until 5pm. That meant the dinner organizers had only two hours flat in which to bring in their 1500 guests, one-by-one through high-security magnetometers of course, and get them seated, plus setting aside the required time for Secret Service agents to sweep the room.

 

It was a close-run thing, but they made it with mere minutes to spare … maybe a sense of relief boosted the crowd’s readiness to laugh at the routine by those guys in the white ties.
  

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -