By NiallO’Dowd

Back then there was much discussion over how expensive politics had become. The culprit was the new fangled science of television, which made it necessary to buy ads on the tube which were not cheap even back then.

They still aren’t. In contrast to 1960, the winner of the 2008 presidential election will spend about $500 million getting elected, as will his or her opponent.

That means we’ll soon have the first billion-dollar president. The sum John F. Kennedy spent wouldn’t even buy a minor TV ad campaign these days.

One wonders what Joe Kennedy, John F.’s dad, would make of today’s election financing. Old Joe was a brilliant strategist who sprinkled money like fairy dust in the right quarters when it was needed to grease wheels.

Back then there was huge amount

of hidden expenditure too. “Walking around money,” as it was known, was very widely used.

Poll workers anxious to get voters to the polls were advised by all parties to spend liberally if people needed any necessities in life.

The old Irish political machines made sure that basic needs were met in the run-up to an election. Chickens in the pot or jobs for unemployed sons ands daughters were all part of the services of the machine.

On election day itself, there was great work for child minders, cab drivers to bring people to the polls, and cover for a host of other jobs so that voters could cast the all-important ballot.

This is how politicians made themselves relevant to a community, unlike the system today where only a handful of states and a fraction of the population – i.e., huge, heavy hitting donors — are considered vital for the candidates.

After Watergate an attempt to end the system of corrupt money from big wigs was made. Federal matching funds kicked in when a certain threshold was reached. However, serious candidates today just ignore the matching funds, knowing that they need to raise far more than what they represent.

Does the injection of huge money today make our system any cleaner or better? Of course not. It just concentrates power and influence in the hands of the huge corporations and money givers. We have the best politicians money can buy.

It is no coincidence that three of the greatest presidents — Harry Truman, who was a creature of the Irish Pendergast machine in Missouri, Franklin Roosevelt, who watched Tammany Hall in action in New York, and Kennedy himself — were products or byproducts of the Irish political machine in America.

All learned a core lesson of taking care of the little guy from the machine. Roosevelt’s New Deal was fashioned in part from advice from the New York Irish bosses who advised Roosevelt how to take care of voters by taking care of their basic needs after the Depression hit.

As author Peter Quinn has pointed out, when New York Governor Al Smith became the first Irish Catholic to run for president in 1928 his agenda was “worker safety, old age pensions, child labor, decent housing” — all concerns rooted in the Irish machine. Roosevelt, who succeeded him as governor, continued those priorities and transformed them into the New Deal.

Nowadays the amount of money needed to win a presidential election has become a national scandal. Everyone running for president these days knows they will have to raise an average of several million dollars a week to just stay in the race. Truly, money has become the mother’s milk of politics.

Think of what this all means. The candidate will hold endless fundraisers, eating rubber chicken every weekend night between now and the election.

In addition, the candidate will spend literally hours every day on the phone dialing for dollars. Most of his or her campaign staff will be focused on one thing only — making sure that the candidate has enough money to survive.

That is the main reason why the campaign starts earlier every election cycle. Kennedy did not declare until January in 1960, just weeks before the first primary in New Hampshire. Now, Senator Hillary Clinton and her main Democratic and Republican challengers are in the race a full year earlier.

Does an earlier race make for better candidates, or does it just further empower the fat cats who have turned buying politicians into an art form? The answer seems obvious.

Who knows what John F. Kennedy would think if he were around today of our broken system. Not much I’d say.

IN 1960, when John F. Kennedy ran for president and was elected, his campaign cost $9.7 million. His opponent, Richard Nixon, spent $10.7 million.