Newsflash! "Romney is his own biggest campaign donor"!

Mr. Legend In His Own Mind is his own biggest donor? Surprise, surprise.

The truly interesting thing about Mittney is how much legitimacy a few million bucks of your own money can buy you. There is no earthly reason anyone should be considering Romney a contender, except that he has the money to buy media exposure.

Which points to a fundamental problem in the way campaigning is approached in the U.S. If you have a personal fortune you can literally buy your way into the White House (or either House of Congress).

If all candidates were forced to operate on an equal budget and given equal time, we would have a much different race on our hands, and we might get leaders with a different set of values.

The fact is, even among Democrats we measure the candidate's success by the amount of money he or she has and how much more he or she can raise. Is this a true indicator of leadership skills? Is it a true measure of a candidate's vision? Is the candidate who can raise the most money indeed "the most bankable?" Is "the most bankable" the best?

Shouldn't Romney's performance in Massachusetts have taught us that it takes more than money to make an effective leader? Shouldn't Bush, whose MBA, "corporate management style," and rush to privatize everything have failed the nation so miserably, tell us something about the notion that what America needs is more CEOs?

In the end what money buys is time—air time.

And what Romney is showing us is it doesn't matter so much where that money comes from. It's the money alone that matters. Because the truth is, most of us don't contribute to campaigns, but many of us who don't do vote. And who we vote for often depends more on who we feel more familiar with, or who feels "inevitable" to us.

And that depends on who has the money to get maximum media exposure.

Romney may yet prove that as far as campaigning's concerned, you don't need many friends as long as you've got friends (or at least one friend) with money.