Just as reformers have often warned and long feared, money has swamped the American political system, placing a critical amount of the 2016 presidential campaign in the hands of private interests, outside of regulation and largely beyond accountability. More than a year away from the 2016 election, it seems clear the new cash-driven strategies are bad for democracy.
The sums involved are staggering — we’ll look at some of the numbers in a minute — but to understand the profound transformation of politics we’re watching, consider the recent maneuvering of Republican ex-Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, who appears hell-bent on maximizing the amount of political money in his corner.
For months, Bush has been holding political fundraisers, delivering speeches and hiring advisers, but also coyly denying he’s made a decision about whether to seek the White House in 2016. In one case, he slipped up and acknowledged the ruse: “I’m running for president in 2016, and the focus is gonna be about how we — if I run — how do you create high, sustained economic growth, where more people have a chance at earned success?” he said on NBC.
Note the way Bush immediately tried to clean up the gaffe — “if I run” — as if anybody seriously doubts that this son and brother of two presidents plans to make his own bid for the White House. The verbal contortions — and the entire structure of Bush’s nascent campaign — are built around the new rules that allow candidates to raise unlimited funds for so-called super PACs, political action committees that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money supporting and attacking candidates without disclosing who’s behind the activity.
So we’ve seen Bush crisscrossing the country raising money for a super PAC called Right to Rise that’s believed to have raised $100 million that will likely get spent helping likely candidate Bush and attacking his enemies. Bush isn’t alone: Virtually every serious Republican candidate for office, including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Rand Paul, ex-Sen. Rick Santorum and Dr. Ben Carson is affiliated with one super PAC or another.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton has called for strong campaign finance limits, by constitutional amendment if necessary — but then gave in to reality and is expected to connect with Priorities USA, a super PAC created by supporters of President Obama.
There’s a catch to these potentially bottomless money fountains. By law, they can’t coordinate with campaigns after a candidate has officially declared he or she is running. There’s also a convoluted restriction on what an official candidate can do for his or her super PAC: Candidates can meet with donors, but not ask for more than $5,000. Such pitches can be made to the donors, but not in the candidate’s presence.
The first problem with this system is that it encourages, and even rewards, a kind of dishonesty by candidates. “What we’re seeing is effectively a farce being played out here, where each of these candidates — in every sense of the word — is avoiding the longstanding requirements of federal election law,” is how Trevor Potter, who served as a high-ranking official in the two presidential campaigns of Sen. John McCain, put it to National Journal. “It’s very much a wink and a nod, we all know this, this is a game.”
The game was created by a string of Supreme Court rulings that unraveled legal restrictions on political donors. Since the most important of these decisions, the 2007 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, money has gushed into American politics.
In 2008, the year after Citizens United, more than $300 million from PACs and individual contributions was spent on the race for president. Four years later, that number more than tripled to over $1 billion and some predict spending for 2016 could edge toward $10 billion. The overwhelming majority of these new dollars will be from super PACs.
The flood of money and wink-and-nod rules have led, predictably, to corruption. Some of it is old-fashioned and obvious: Earlier this year, the U.S. Justice Department announced its first criminal conviction of a political consultant for violating the rule requiring separation of PACs and official campaign activity. Tyler Harber, who was working for a congressional campaign in Virginia, created a super PAC, then directly coordinated its activities with the campaign. Harber also spent over $300,000 in PAC money with a printing firm that kicked a fat percentage back to him personally, and lied about the whole matter when the FBI came knocking.
Harber, set to be sentenced this month, may be the first of many campaign operatives to abuse the money flood the Supreme Court set off. There’s also a broader corruption taking place. The spectacle of candidates lining up to kiss the ring of Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson at an event earlier this year is being repeated by the Koch brothers, industrialists with a deep, vested interest in limiting taxes and regulation on their empire. The Kochs and some of their big-donor allies reportedly plan to spend $889 million on the 2016 election.
In the Citizens United decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that “the appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.”
Every indication suggests Kennedy’s prediction has turned out to be dead wrong. Last fall, even as more money than ever poured into the political system, America saw the lowest voter turnout level in 72 years, and 84% of Americans say money has too much influence over politics, according to a recent CBS News-New York Times poll. And 85% say the campaign finance system needs a complete overhaul.
Voters know, even if the Supreme Court doesn’t, that we need to contain, control or scrap the current PAC-driven system. What should be a time for national debate about the pressing issues facing the country is turning into a kind of cattle auction. America deserves better.