IN an expansive mood, the mayor of Buffalo, N.Y., recently described himself as "the best mayor that money can buy." He was kidding, of coursebut it was the kind of joke that many politicians today would make at their peril. Once such a line might have brought down the house, but nowadays it comes uncomfortably close to the truthnot about corruption, but about a far more costly phenomenon: campaign expenditures. The growing dominance of TV on every level of political salesmanship has raised campaign costs astronomically and convinced the public that politics...
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