The Buying of the President

One of the most important questions to ask about a politician is who will own him or her after the election is over. For example, a candidate put into office on the backs of oil companies is unlikely to preside over a pacifist presidency marked by scientific automotive developments that decrease U.S. dependency for foreign oil. You know, hypothetically or whatever.

One of the best ways to figure who is owned by whom is to visit The Buying of the President, a campaign finance website operated by watchdog group The Center for Public Integrity. Their candidates page scores each candidate based upon his or her level of personal and public finance disclosure. The information therein is pretty revealing.

The highest scoring candidate (read "greatest financial transparency") is Barack Obama, receiving a score of 4/7 and the distinction of being the only candidate to have revealed not only non-required public finance information but also his personal tax returns.

Tied for second place with scores of 2/7 are John McCain, Dennis Kucinich and Hillary Clinton. Third is held collectively by Duncan Hunter, Mike Huckabee and Mike Gravel with scores of 1/7.

Those candidates who have disclosed nothing beyond what is legally required of them, receiving scores of 0/7, are Rudy Giuliani, Ron Paul, Alan Keyes, Fred Thompson and — now this is interesting — John Edwards.

Sadly, not one of these candidates has divulged his or her political tax returns — not even Obama. This is exactly why people like me keep voting for Ralph Nader.