I have admired the Clintons’ foundation for years for its fine work on AIDS and global poverty, and I have moderated many panels at the annual Clinton Global Initiative. Yet with each revelation of failed disclosures or the appearance of a conflict of interest from speaking fees of US$500,000 for former US president Bill Clinton, I have wondered: What were they thinking?
However, the problem is not precisely the Clintons’. It is the entire disgraceful money-based US political system.
Look around:
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie accepted flights and playoff tickets from Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who has business interests Christie can affect.
US Senator Marco Rubio has received financial assistance from billionaire Norman Braman and has channeled public money to Braman’s causes.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush likely has delayed declaring his US presidential candidacy because then he would have to stop coordinating with his super political action committee (PAC) and raising money for it. He is breaching at least the spirit of the law.
When problems are this widespread, the problem is not crooked individuals, but perverse incentives from a rotten structure.
“There is a systemic corruption here,” says Sheila Krumholz of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign money. “It’s kind of baked in.”
Most politicians are good people. Then they discover that money is the only fuel that makes the system work and sometimes step into the bog themselves.
Money is not a new problem, of course. Former US president John F. Kennedy was accused of using his father’s wealth to buy elections.
In response, he joked that he had received the following telegram from his dad: “Don’t buy another vote. I won’t pay for a landslide!”
Yet Robert Reich, Clinton’s labor secretary and now chairman of the national governing board of Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog group, says that inequality has hugely exacerbated the problem. Billionaires adopt presidential candidates as if they were prize racehorses. Yet for them, it is only a hobby expense.
For example, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson donated US$92 million to super PACs in the 2012 election cycle; as a share of their net worth, that was equivalent to US$300 from the median US family. So a multibillionaire can influence a national election for the same sacrifice an average family bears in, say, a weekend driving getaway.
Money does not always succeed, of course, and billionaires often end up wasting money on campaigns. According to the San Jose Mercury News, Meg Whitman spent US$43 per vote in her failed campaign for governor of California in 2010, mostly from her own pocket. However, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg won his 2009 re-election campaign after, according to the New York Daily News, spending US$185 of his own money per vote.
The real bargain is lobbying — and that is why corporations spend 13 times as much lobbying as they do contributing to campaigns, by the calculations of Lee Drutman, author of a book on lobbying.
The healthcare industry hires about five times as many lobbyists as there are members of the US Congress. That is a shrewd investment. Drug company lobbyists have prevented the US Medicare system from getting bulk discounts, amounting to perhaps US$50 billion a year in extra profits for the sector.
Likewise, lobbying has carved out the egregious carried-interest tax loophole, allowing many financiers to pay vastly reduced tax rates. In that respect, money in politics both reflects inequality and amplifies it.
Lobbyists exert influence because they bring a potent combination of expertise and money to the game. They gain access, offer a well-informed take on obscure issues — and, for a member of Congress, you think twice before biting the hand that feeds you.
The US Supreme Court is partly to blame for the money game, for its misguided rulings that struck down limits in campaign spending by corporations and unions and the overall political donation cap for individuals.
Still, US President Barack Obama could take one step that would help: an executive order requiring federal contractors to disclose all political contributions.
“President Obama could bring the dark money into the sunlight in time for the 2016 election,” says Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. “It’s the single most tangible thing anyone could do to expose the dark money that is now polluting politics.”
I have covered corrupt regimes all over the world and I find it ineffably sad to return to the US and behold institutionalized sleaze.
Reich told me that for meaningful change to arrive, “voters need to reach a point of revulsion.”
Hey, folks, that time has come.
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