do you think presidential campaigns are too expensive?

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looking around on internet i found this website: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/ take a look at the numbers and then tell me, do you think such huge expenses are justified? do you think such a huge amount of money could have been used better? i personally think that if the two main democrat candidates alone ended up spending almost half a billion dollars just to campaign, all the money spent by all the candidates could have probably been used better to help out the people or to give a good example, since western economy is on the verge of a serious economic crysis, my opinion is that who expects to guide the world should demonstrate the capacity of not partying all their money away, ending up in debt. what do you think?