Can Money Buy Political Love?

Political Players is a weekly conversation with the leaders, consultants, and activists who are shaping American politics. This week, CBS News' Brian Goldsmith talks with veteran political analyst Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, about new fundraising numbers in the presidential race and the history of the campaign comeback.

CBSNews.com: Sen. Obama has outraised Sen. Clinton this quarter by about $10 million in primary funds. But can financial strength, on its own, buy him political strength?

Larry Sabato: Well, you look for several indicators early in this process. You look for poll numbers. You look for endorsements. You look for the financial support garnered by each candidate. And you look for indefinable qualities on the campaign trail and in debates.

And that comprises the judgment about each candidate. It may end up being wrong, but it seems reasonable at the time. So Obama's money lead is very, very significant. It wasn't even close, when you take out the general election money to have Barack Obama coming out of nowhere, and outraising Hillary Clinton substantially in primary money for two quarters.

But is it the only factor? Of course not. If it were the only factor, then he wouldn't be well behind in the public opinion polls. And he would be getting a larger share of the key endorsements than he is.

CBSNews.com: Going back to your comment about Obama coming out of nowhere, it seems that Hillary has 15 years and a whole administration's worth of political chits to cash in. Why do you think Obama's been able to so substantially out-raise her?

Larry Sabato: There are two reasons. The first is that he is genuinely charismatic and exciting. And that sort of candidate can manage to reach the grass roots and the net roots of the party. And that's the positive reason. The negative reason is that there's no question that a significant portion of the Democratic base has been desperately search for a non-Hillary candidate.

For them it really is ABC: Anybody But Clinton. They don't like her for loads of reasons. They don't like her for her personality. They don't like her because they're upset about her vote on the Iraq war. They don't like her because they consider her the establishment candidate.

CBSNews.com: To what extent does Obama's money advantage really matter?

Larry Sabato: Well, it matters a great deal in the early stage because you either have the financial capacity to compete or you don't. And that's where even the smaller totals of John Edwards and Bill Richardson cannot be discounted. What Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have is enough money to guarantee them full competition through Feb. 5, no matters what happens to them in January. For Edwards and Richardson, though, they've raised enough to be competitive in the half dozen states that will be voting in January, with the possible exception of Florida. That's a big, expensive media state. But let's remember that if they catch fire in those early primaries, they can end up surprising everybody, and overtaking both Clinton and Obama.

But, you know, it's July. And it's really important to say that there's far more that we don't know than we do know. So, all of these early indicators are interesting. But by no means are they overwhelming, nor are they all pointing in the same direction. There are too many people trying to bring down the curtain on this election campaign too early.

CBSNews.com: To borrow a phrase from Don Rumsfeld, what do you think are the biggest "known unknowns" yet to be resolved in the Democratic primary race? What are the factors that you think we should look at to determine whether Clinton or Obama or others can seize the advantage as this race heats up?

Larry Sabato: We never know how candidates will wear until they wear. Some candidates start out with a big head of steam, and then fade, as McCain has done. Was that predictable? Well, not if you read the news coverage.

I can remember front page headlines in a couple of major newspapers declaring John McCain the inevitable, almost the inevitable, Republican nominee because of his cornering the market on Bush Pioneers. That was 18 months to two years ago.

Well, now, things have changed, haven't they? The same thing can happen in an accelerated way on the Democratic side. Another unknown, frankly, is scandals. Scandals break on candidates. This will be a very rare election season if there isn't at least one major scandal that is uncovered about one of the current frontrunners. Could be more than one. You never know. We can all think of possibilities.

CBSNews.com: John McCain has not lived up to those early expectations, only raising a little over $11 million last quarter and having to restructure his campaign. But it wasn't so long ago that $11 million in a quarter was actually a lot of money. Why do you think the price of success has gone up so much?

Larry Sabato: Because campaigns are always a matter of keeping up with the Joneses. And you can raise what appears to be a lot of money, and be out of the game quickly, if somebody else is raising three or four or five times more. Second, the technologies of politics become more expensive with each passing election cycle. And we keep layering more of them on.

Now you have all the new ones connected to the Internet, and to text messaging and everything else that's coming on strong. And all that's paid for on top of what it costs to pay for the other technologies that had been used in politics since time immemorial. And let's not forget that generally speaking, television advertising costs increase at four times the consumer price index. So, all that adds up to real money, as they say.

CBSNews.com: As McCain's campaign is undergoing some changes, what can we look for to see if he's actually succeeding in this new mode?

Larry Sabato: Well, the metrics would be raising more money and doing better in the polls. I don't know how you restart a campaign that has fallen to the extent that McCain's has. You look at the comeback attempts. Everybody cites Kerry in '04, but there's an enormous difference between what happened to Kerry and what happened to McCain.

CBSNews.com: Kerry could pump his own money in, and Kerry didn't accept public financing.

Larry Sabato: That's right. And also remember, Kerry really was not a heavy frontrunner. The Democratic public did not know John Kerry. The problem for McCain is the Republican public does know him. And they have decided for a combination of reasons — immigration, campaign finance, maybe Iraq, maybe his personality — to reject him.

There have been a lot of other comeback attempts by candidates who started strong, and were interrupted by scandal, like Gary Hart or an insurgent upset early in the primaries, and so on. And you know what? They generally don't win. They can sometimes comeback partly and make a decent showing, but they don't win.

And at this point, I think McCain is facing a rendezvous with history. That is, if he wins, it will be ahistorical.

CBSNews.com: If you step back from McCain individually, it's interesting to watch the not-so-slow death of public financing for presidential campaigns. And this cycle will probably be the first in which both major party nominees rejected government funding not only in the primaries, but also the general election. Will this system be replaced with anything that works?

Larry Sabato: The only thing that could result in a significant replacement would be a change in public mood, where the public literally demanded, as they did after Watergate, that the system be cleaned up — and that public money be substituted to the greatest degree possible for private money. And I see no indication that the public has been moved by the series of scandals that we've had over decades, and even the long series that we had during the 2006 campaign. So, my guess is no, it's not going to happen.

CBSNews.com: The conventional wisdom now seems to be that even if McCain wins the nomination in February or March, if he's taken the public money, he's essentially hobbled then against the Democrat who presumably hasn't taken public money between that period of time and when he accepts the nomination in August. Do you buy that?

Larry Sabato: I buy that, except that, of course, he could always rent the Straight Talk Express bus again. And they could use fans instead of air-conditioners. They'd figure out something. You know, Bob Dole had to survive for weeks in the summer of '96 with no money. And they got fairly good at having free media events daily, so they'd at least get their sound bite on the evening news.

Of course, you don't want to use the Dole campaign as an example of how to win.

CBSNews.com: How do you assess the rest of the Republican field at this point?

Larry Sabato: Well, I think most people would fairly say it's a three-way race. Not to ignore the other candidates or say they're not having any impact. But, you know, it's Giuliani versus Romney versus Thompson. The trend line for Giuliani is not positive. He has drifted down. But he's certainly not in the disastrous situation that McCain is in either. He might still manage to be nominated, and one can imagine easily how that would happen: a series of terrorist events that would blot out the other major issues, including the social issues.

Romney's been the big surprise of the campaign. He's managed to make the most of what were not impressive political assets in the beginning of the campaign. That is, he wasn't well known. He clearly is hobbled by some unique factors, such as Mormonism. He had to maneuver across the political spectrum from moderate liberal to conservative. And that's never easy to accomplish.

Fred Thompson is still the great unknown. You're never as popular as the day before you announce. And once he announces, I think the negative information about him that has been a trickle so far will become a torrent. Not because there's a great deal there, necessarily, but simply because that's the way the process works.

You know, presidential politics is a zero-sum game. You're going to pay for every positive story. And you may get a break for every negative story.