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Former and current John McCain presidential campaign staffers are lamenting their candidate’s freefall in the polls and deficit spending on the part of the campaign and all the while, nobody seems to be asking - where does all of the money go?

A cursory look at the current state of presidential campaign politics is one that shows very little gained on the part of the candidates for all of the money they’ve raised and spent.

On the Democrats side Barack Obama’s raised a ton of money, but it hasn’t lifted him in the polls against Hillary. She still remains the Democratic front-runner, while Obama is the fundraising leader. Money can help you win the White House, but it’s not a guarantee that you will win the White House (just ask John Kerry). As for the other Democrats, John Edwards seems to be mired in the mid-teens in polling and his fundraising remains a fairly flat (but healthy) line.

As for the Republicans we’ve seen John McCain’s popularity (and money plummet) and out of nowhere minimalist candidate Ron Paul pick up a little financial steam. McCain’s still bouncing between second and third and Paul’s hanging in the middle to the back of the pack with almost no likelihood of gaining any real momentum. Besides pack front-runner Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney’s raised a lot of money and while doing well in the early primary states’ polls - it’s questionable whether he can get over the hump on Mega-Super-Improved Primary-palooza Tuesday on February 5th (although he is doing a heck of a job buying the August Iowa Straw Poll*).

All of this money, and nothing to show for it. What’s even more intriguing is that two guys who aren’t even in the race - FRED Thompson and Al Gore (although FRED has already given a definitive indication that his announcement is a mere formality) haven’t raised a cent (although again FRED has now begun to do so) and remain near the top of their parties’ polls. Simply by saying the following ten words, “I am a candidate for president of the United States,” either of them would become front-runners in their respective parties.

So in response to my original question, ‘where does all of the money go?‘ - the only logical conclusion is, ‘into the pockets of fairly ineffective consultants (because if they were effective, they’d have a lot more to show for what they’ve done).’

*The Iowa straw poll has essentially turned into a vanity contest which Romney has dumped a ton of money into controlling (so much so that Giuliani, McCain, Gilmore and some of the other Republican candidates have raised the white flag and opted to focus their efforts elsewhere). The way that he straw poll (and to a lesser sense the January caucus) works is a function of how many people a candidate’s campaign can deliver to an appointed place for a vote to be taken. In the case of Romney in August, the word is that he’s basically rented every available bus in the state to transport supporters to the vote - thus effectively freezing out the other campaigns and “buying” the vote for himself.