Presidential auction.

• Author: Hightower, Jim
• Position: Vox Populist - On rich people and presidential campaigns

The rich are different from you and me, but the really, really, really rich are also different from the merely rich.

For example, the rich can buy caviar and champagne, but the Triple-R Rich can buy entire Presidential campaigns. Take Sheldon Adelson, the moneybag who has pumped more than $10 million already into Newt Gingrich's run. This global casino baron hauled in $3.3 million an hour last year. His bet on Newt amounts to about half a day's work.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Then there's Rick Santorum, who insists that people are flocking to him because of the power of his ideas. Sure, Rick--and the power of Foster Friess's money.

This little-known Wall Street multimillionaire has long been a steady funder of rightwing Christian politics. Friess modestly claims that God is "the chairman of my board." I doubt that, but Friess definitely is Santorum's guardian angel. And proud of it: Friess says the political contest "is so exciting."

So there you have it: American politics has developed into a game for the fun and profit of a few superrich narcissists. And that's why Barack Obama was right on target two years ago when he denounced the Supreme Court for allowing unlimited corporate cash to flood into our elections, calling it a "threat to democracy."

But where did that guy go? Now that gushers are pouring into this year's Republican Presidential campaigns through Super PACs, he has pivoted adroitly from condemning such corrupt funds ... to creating one of his own. Savvy or cynical?

I call it sad. Rather than taking the high road and rallying a public that's thoroughly disgusted by gobs of money in politics, Obama now joins Romney (who has "money" in his very name) on the cash-slicked low road. Obama's Super PAC, named Priorities USA, is as corrupt as the Republicans'. What we're getting this year is not a Presidential election; it's an auction!

Early last year, during an intimate dinner with some Silicon Valley high-tech barons, Obama posed a question to Steve Jobs: "What would it take to make iPhones in the United States?"

Instead of answering, Jobs issued a blunt retort: "Those...