It’s a strange fact of our political system that politicians buy their way into office.

In the 2004 general elections, 91 percent of the senate elections and 95 percent of those for the House were won by the politicians who spent the most on their campaigns. Now, I’m not saying that being president or a congressman or a senator comes with a literal price tag, but the statistics are hard to refute.

The truth of the matter is far more convoluted. There isn’t an actual requirement for vast wealth on the part of major political candidates, but it sure seems like there might as well be.

When is the last time someone ran for president who was even slightly less than extremely wealthy?

While the tendency for anyone but those in the highest of income brackets to be excluded in our system of governance from positions of power seems to stink of oligarchy, a deeper and more insidious problem presents itself in the workings of campaign finance.

Since ads and similar campaigning methods cost money, it seems logical to conclude that funding can greatly influence the success or failure of a political campaign.

While this might seem ultimately democratic (after all, if the success of a candidate is based on the contributions given to them, would that not seem to manifest the desires of the people?), it has trapped our political system in a logistical catch-22.

Why you might ask? Corporations.

In 1905, President Teddy Roosevelt spoke before Congress suggesting that all corporate donations should be banned. After all, many corporations have access to such vast financial resources that it disproportionately represents the actual amount of people involved who support the candidate in question.

Unsurprisingly, the members of congress, many of whom owed their positions to sizable contributions from corporate supporters, did not greet this idea warmly.

Today, sadly, we have not come very far. What Roosevelt feared has come to pass. Despite numerous attempts to regulate donations to candidates and spending on the part of said candidates, the use of political action committees has allowed for a plethora of loopholes through which corporations may funnel money into the campaigns of various politicians.

These campaign contributions are invaluable to getting elected to major political offices.

In the last presidential race, candidates Barack Obama and John McCain spent a total record-shattering $5.3 billion, in comparison to a relatively paltry $4.2 billion spent on the 2004 campaign.

Current Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has sunk approximately 45 million dollars of his own money into his campaign.

Attempts at campaign finance reform have met with little more support than in 1905.  In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to ban spending by corporations in candidate elections.

So, ultimately who will change this? The politicians who owe their positions to the same largely unchecked corporate donations that they should presumably be attempting to regulate?

Unlikely.