The longest, costliest, most overly handicapped presidential horserace in history continues apace and we're still fully half-a-year away from the finish line.

The money may not be the worst of it -- my vote in that regard goes to the unconscionable length of the race this year -- but cash continues to be the corrupting force that no amount of campaign finance reform seems able to fix.

Before he dropped out of the race, Republican Mitt Romney was practically a one-man economic stimulus program, spending more than $100 million on his fruitless campaign. In all, the dropouts in both parties dropped more than $360 million, and that was just to lose.

The three survivors -- Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain -- have raised more than $500 million among them, with Obama alone taking in half that booty. And remember, we still have six months to go. The cost of this election could easily double before Election Day. It will certainly be our first billion-dollar campaign and then some.

Of course, there is a positive way of looking at this. All that money is being recycled into the American economy, after all, or at least certain segments of the economy. Political consultants, advertising firms, radio and television stations, transportation services and selected pizza parlors are being insulated against the potential ravages of recession.

And then there's the news media. For the first time in memory, this year's presidential race is receiving round-the-clock coverage, especially on cable television news channels. It has created a cottage industry -- make that a mansion industry -- for analysts, commentators, pollsters and pundits, not to mention regular political reporters and political comics of both the standup and sit-down variety.

It also has created an incessant high-decibel din of competing opinions and ever-shifting analysis designed not so much to enlighten as to entertain and to keep us focused on the horserace aspect of the spectacle.

And there is no shortage of Clem McCarthy types ready to entertain us.

McCarthy was the famous gravel-voiced radio sportscaster who covered horseracing and boxing events of the 1930s and 1940s, frequently infusing them with more excitement than they deserved. His successors today are equally colorful, many drawn from the insider ranks of politics rather than the detached ranks of professional journalism.

Karl Rove, the ultimate insider from the Bush administration, was hired recently as a political commentator on Fox News. He also writes a column for Newsweek and contributes to the Wall Street Journal.

Rove follows in the footsteps of other White House aides turned pundits, from Nixon speechwriters Pat Buchanan and William Safire to Clinton advisers James Carville and George Stephanopolis.

Traditional journalistic eyebrows are raised over the efficacy of commentary by established partisans like Rove, who in one recent broadcast offered "advice" to Barack Obama on how to conduct his campaign.

An Obama operative responded: "Wouldn't taking his advice be a little like getting health tips from a funeral home director?"

Others argue it's no different from earlier attempts by the industry to achieve the sort of "fair and balanced" commentary pioneered by the Point-Counterpoint segments of CBS's 60 Minutes back in the 1970s. The weekly series had ideologically divided columnists James J. Kilpatrick and Shana Alexander offering quarrelsome essays on issues of the day.

But surely there's a difference between that and the growing practice of offering a platform for committed partisans to give analysis of political developments while making themselves available as political consultants in their off-air careers.

In any case, the length and cost and media commitment to this quadrennium's presidential horserace requires a constantly shifting field and an ability by the play-by-play commentators to keep things in interesting conflict.

Thus, even as some of them urge Clinton to abandon the field in an unwinnable race, they secretly cheer her determination to hang in there to the bitter end.

If she actually did get out, the political bloviators would have little to yammer about between now and national conventions more than three months away.

There would be an unexpected lull in the economy. Consultants would spend most of their time commiserating with each other by cell phone and laptop. The cable news channels would switch from presidential politics to round-the-clock coverage of, say, natural disasters.

Rove would apply for unemployment insurance.

And the rest of us, having lost the ability to think for ourselves, might just take up smoking and drinking again.

Either way, we lose. It ain't over 'til it's over, I'm sorry to say.

Jim Brunelle is a weekly columnist and has been commenting on Maine issues for more than 40 years. He lives in Cape Elizabeth and can be reached at jbrune@maine.rr.com.