Thanks for the reminder on the history of the Dole ’96 disaster, Jim. I have never forgotten the utter cynicism of the Dole campaign that year, when the election was recognized as a lost cause by Labor Day. They poured on a massively wasteful TV ad campaign that had one very important effect: Paying lucrative commissions to key people in the campaign.

The enormous budget of a presidential campaign inevitably attracts . . .  well, political entrepreneurs might be a fair term. By Election Day, John McCain’s campaign will have spent something like $300 million (not including separate expenditures by the RNC and 527s) and that budget represents a lot of opportunity for opportunists. For the clever operative, a losing campaign can be a financial windfall in the same way that some CEOs get rich running their companies into bankruptcy.