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Selling Out is a book about how big money is sabotaging our democracy-and how to stop it. For despite occasional bursts of reform, the system of checks and balances we studied in high school has steadily evolved instead into a system of checks, checks, and more checks. Warren Beatty's caricatured rants in Bulworth about how elected official care more about their contributors than about their constituents are a far more accurate depiction of Washington and state capitals today than those heard in July 4th speeches.
Indeed, the corporate abuse in mid-2002 was the direct by-product of a corporate Washington filled with those paid to be what Kipling called "shut-eyed sentries." In the view of Joan Claybrook, head of Public Citizen and a veteran of the campaign finance wars, "political money from the Enrons and others bought loopholes, exemptions, lax law enforcement, underfunded regulatory agencies, and the presumption that corporate officials could buy anything they wanted with the shareholders' money."
The basic problem is that candidates regard money as Mark Twain did bourbon: "Too much is not enough." Because the press and public judge a candidacy by its treasury, and because no one can be sure how much will be "enough," candidates feel the pressure to engage in financial overkill, just as the Soviets and Americans did with nuclear missiles in their arms race. And when the Supreme Court in the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision struck down the Federal Election Campaign Act's spending ceilings, the alms race took off. Then-and now-the sky's the limit.
Yes, we're weary of screeds about money in politics. It's an old story: from Plutarch writing about how money corrupted elections and ruined Rome…to the Standard Oil Trust in the 1890s, which, it was said, "did everything to the Pennsylvania Legislature except refine it"…to Lyndon Johnson's emergence as a major politician, according to biographer Robert A. Caro, only when he distributed large funds from Texas oil interests to congressional colleagues…to Richard Nixon's $2 million contribution from milk interests in 1972, followed by his order to increase mil price supports and thereby milk prices to millions of American families…to Charles Keating, 'of "Keating Five" fame, who, when asked whether his substantial contributions influenced the policy makers receiving them, helpfully replied, "I want to say in the most forceful way I can: I certainly hope so."
We've been so periodically bombarded by small-bore corruption or Watergate-size scandals that money in politics has become like sex in Victorian England-a subject of gossip, amusement, and ultimately indifference. "They all do it," many citizens sigh, with a shrug.
Allow me to be skeptical about cynicism. While money has long been the lifeblood of the body politic, only recently has it metastasized into an authentic crisis due to its volume and impact. While in 1976 it cost an average of $87,000 to win a House seat and $609,000 a U.S. Senate seat, those amounts grew by 2000 like beanstalks to $842,000 for the House and $7.2 million for the Senate-a tenfold leap (or more than threefold in current dollars). And more money brought with it intended leverage. "We're all tainted by this corrupt system," concludes Senator John McCain (R-AZ), a national leader for cleaner elections.
So, although issues such as terrorism, social security, health care, and pollution absorb far more public attention and concern, the scandal of strings-attached money corrupting politics and government is the most urgent problem in America today-because it makes it harder to solve nearly all our other problems. How can we produce smart defense, environmental, and health policies if arms contractors, oil firms, and HMOs have such a hammerlock over the committees charged with considering reforms? How can we adequately fund education and child care if special interests win special tax breaks that deplete public resources? How can we attract the best people to be public servants if those who run and serve are increasingly either special-interest or self-financing multimillionaires?
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