Tuesday’s big partisan swing has pundits and public alike asking: So, what’s the lesson?
With a sea of money sloshing through the campaigns, but not necessarily bringing the biggest spenders into office, some might be tempted to suggest money doesn’t matter after all.
Big mistake.
And it’s one Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics, made recently on NPR’s On the Media. Specifically, the question posed in the segment was whether money can buy elections. The Freakonomics brand is all about using surprising data to cleverly refute popular assumptions, and, true to form, Dubner said no. According to research by, among others, his Freakonomics co-author Steven Levitt, outspending your opponent actually has a very minor effect on election outcomes.
But Dubner misses what matters most. The fact that the bigger spender isn’t necessarily the victor has been known for some time. But while money may not always buy electoral victory (as Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina both found out, very expensively, in California) it does something even worse: It buys candidates.
Outside of the independently super-rich, that money comes mainly from large corporations with large corporate interests. Let’s be clear: When these corporate entities give money to political candidates, it’s not a donation — it’s an investment. The winner of an election, whether he outspends his opponent or not, feels beholden to the interests that got him elected. It’s precisely that sense of dependency on your underwriters that corrupts the system. After all, if that candidate wants to get reelected, he or she is unlikely to turn against those funders, and so the unhealthy cycle continues.
Certainly the underwriters get it: A recent poll by Zogby International showed that “according to nine in ten business leaders surveyed, corporate America contributes to political campaigns to gain access to influence the legislative process; to avoid adverse legislative consequences; or to promote a certain ideological position.” Yet even among these influencers “(51%) disagree that corporations, unions, and trade associations should give unlimited and undisclosed contributions to other organizations to be spent on campaign advertisements.”
And there’s another way big-money private financing of elections perverts democracy. It’s a very practical one. The need to spend massively, even if not as much as your opponent, means our legislators are spending roughly one-third of their time in office, not working for us, the people, but raising money instead. Instead of being lawmakers, the system turns them into fundraisers.
Just as perverse: Our high-priced elections also deny us just the kind of leader we most need now — fresh-thinking, smart, committed, feet-on-the ground folks who might just live next door. The need for big bucks, again, even if not THE biggest, blocks keeps untold number of such talented — but not money-connected — leaders from ever having a chance to run. They can’t afford the price of admission.
The three states with public financing of elections for their legislation have proven the transformative effects of giving regular citizens a chance to lead. In Maine, for example, Deb Simpson, a single mother and former waitress was able to run for the legislature in 2000 and win. (See the video about Deb below.) She’s so respected that she’s been re-elected four times and has served on the state’s judiciary committee; now she’s a leader on the environment. Can anyone imagine Mike Bloomberg having won in New York if he’d been a bus driver instead of a billionaire?
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling, allowing for unlimited corporate campaign contributions, has opened the floodgates to a system already awash in big money. The good news is that legislation like Maine’s could start loosening the grip of corporate money. A bill already exists, with 166 co-sponsors in the House! The Fair Elections Now Act has passed the House Administrative committee and could go to a vote if enough citizens get behind it.
Dubner makes some flip and frankly bizarre comparisons — calling current levels of campaign spending “pitifully small” compared to what Americans probably spend on chewing gum. But this is serious, really serious, and the quantity of money is only part of the problem. Regardless of whether money is the deciding factor in most elections, in a contest between two corporately funded candidates, we all lose.
So, does money buy elections? It’s the wrong question, distracting us from the deeper corrupting influence that money unarguably has. Money makes politicians beholden to outside interests, distracts them from their jobs, and shuts good people out. What Dubner misses and what all this adds up to is the death of trust — the lifeblood of democracy – and that’s the one thing money can’t buy.
(Below is a short video about Deb Simpson and the powerful effect of clean elections from Invisible Hand Media. And we can each weigh in right now at FairElectionsNow.org for a democracy that answers to us.)
Frances Moore Lappé is the author of Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want (March 2010) and 17 other books, beginning with the three-million copy Diet for a Small Planet. Small Planet Institute Contributing Writer Stefan Sirucek contributed editorial support. Find more on living democracy at the Small Planet Institute.
We’ll be living for decades, or longer, with the consequences of the BP disaster. That much seems clear. So the question now is, how — how will we proceed after Deepwater Horizon? What lessons will we take in and use?
Randy Kennedy, in the New York Times’ Week in Review suggests one possibility. He likens BP’s reckless pursuit of oil to the obsession that brought down Captain Ahab in his pursuit of Moby-Dick. The lesson we still haven’t learned, Kennedy implies, is a moral one: the dangers lurking not only in oil hunters’ greed and in the hubris of believing we can control nature, but in our own self-indulgence as well.
Kennedy closes with the admonition from Columbia University’s Melville expert Andrew Delbanco — that the BP horror is in part of our own making because, “we want our comforts but we don’t want to know too much about…what makes them possible.” In the same issue, Thomas Friedman seconds the point in his it’s-our-fault column “This Time is Different.”
While greed, hubris and denial have contributed to the worst single environmental catastrophe in our history, to suggest they are “causes” gets us nowhere. A character diagnosis is the evasion, the real denial, we can’t afford.
For one, it leads to despair — since few of us can imagine the end of human greed, hubris, or our tendency to deny what’s uncomfortable.
Worse, the diagnosis diverts us from the first essential step in avoiding continuing global ecocide: that we accept what we now know about our nature and work with that. We know, for example, that concentrated power and lack of transparency bring out the very worst in us. Yet we’ve fallen for an economic and political doctrine with rules certain to speed both.
Nowhere is that concentration more evident than in the fossil fuel industries, where, in 2004, just five companies controlled two thirds of gasoline sales. Their economic might dwarfs that of most countries. Such concentrated economic power infuses and distorts political decision making in its interests.
So we’ve ended up creating the systemic danger FDR warned us against: “the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than their [the people’s] democratic state itself.” That “in its essence, is fascism,” he told Congress in 1938. Such concentrated power is at the root of what has greased not only massive public subsidies for Big Oil — pushing aside safer, renewable energies — but also BP’s ability to stack up egregious safety violations with impunity.
Corporate lobbyists for companies like BP have become so powerful, that in 2009, for every single legislator elected to look out for our common interests, two dozen, mostly corporate, lobbyists spent $3.5 billion working Congress for their private interests. That sum has doubled in less than a decade.
We humans can’t change our nature but we can change the rules that bring out the worst in our nature.
So rather than focusing on “greed or hubris” as a cause of this disaster, let’s tackle the systemic problem that lets these traits triumph: rules that encourage concentrated power – such as those tolerating monopoly power and corporate secrecy — and its sway over public choices.
Let our takeaway from the BP nightmare be that we as a people get serious about removing the power of private wealth in our nation’s governance: enacting, for example, the Fair Elections Now Acts, pending in both houses of Congress that would usher in voluntary public financing of congressional elections.
Only as we move to democratic accountability do we have a fighting chance to enact commonsense rules to keep power dispersed, mandate transparency, and align our need for energy resources and basic fairness with nature’s unbendable rules. This, not redesigning our nature, is the road to preventing another Deepwater Horizon.
If I’m right, maybe I need to become more nuanced in my objections to a focus on character; for there is part of our moral makeup that sure needs fortification: courage. To move toward democracy by and for the people, and against established interests, takes guts.
Yes, we’ve been told that the “meek shall inherit the earth,” but I’ve become convinced that if that turns out to be true, it will be a scorched earth. The only human beings who will be able to inherit a flourishing earth are the courageous. So let’s bulk up our civil courage and go for real democracy.
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Frances Moore Lappé is the author of Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want (March 2010) and 17 other books, beginning with the three-million copy Diet for a Small Planet. Find more on living democracy at the Small Planet Institute.
We’re almost home when a big hand-drawn plywood sign on the side of the street catches our eye—“Hooray Arizona.” My partner Richard Rowe is puzzled, murmuring that he didn’t know an Arizona team had played today.
“It’s immigration the guy is angry about,” I say. And we both moan.
I am to do a live radio interview in 15 minutes, so we just keep driving home. Afterward, I come down to the kitchen and learn, to my big surprise, that while I’d been upstairs talking about democracy, my partner had been doing it.
Here’s what I mean.
By Frances Moore Lappé
“Socialist” has become the new favorite term of derision–working its fear-making magic because, for many Americans, socialism equals the great “government takeover.” It’s assumed to be not just un-American but downright anti-American. Tea Partiers at their round up in Searchlight, Nevada, told us that “socialist” Harry Reid “hates America.”
Our national aversion to the S-word isn’t necessarily a problem. But the term’s rapid rise as a political pot-shot, points to a huge problem: our culture’s lack of a common civic language, words on whose meaning we at least vaguely agree. Without it, we can’t hope to talk to one another about what matters most.
“We have a language of capitalism. We have a language of Marxism. But we have no language of democracy,” historian Lawrence Goodwyn once remarked.
And we need one.
Capitalism and socialism. Imagine if we just got some clarity on these basic terms alone.
First, capitalism. To most of us, it’s quintessentially American. Many of us assume it’s democracy’s essential partner.
But what is it? Capitalism is an economic system in which the person or body owning capital—productive resources like raw material and labor—has the power to make decisions as to the use of these resources and who benefits from them. The capitalist is in control, not the workers, not the community members, not the government. It is a system in which capitalists seek to gain for themselves the highest possible return on their investment.
Reduced to these elements, it’s no surprise that capitalism returns wealth to wealth, leading to a jaw-dropping chasm between rich and poor: In our country meaning that 1 percent of households now have as much net wealth as the bottom 90 percent.
Given this common definition of capitalism—with no built-in civic accountability—it’s no surprise that subsidiaries of U.S. companies, for example, sign contracts to build up Iran’s energy industry, even while the U.S. government sees our national interest as putting the squeeze on that very same economy.
It is paradoxical, then, that we see capitalism and democracy as best buddies when in reality they are driven by opposing principles: Democracy is about the wide dispersion of power so that everyone has a voice. But capitalism, merely left to its own devices, inevitably concentrates wealth and therefore power, so “capital’s” voice carries vastly more weight than citizens’.
Little wonder that capitalism is losing friends around the world. A recent BBC poll in twenty-seven countries found that on average only 11 percent believe it works well. In just two countries did more than a fifth of respondents believe that it works well “as it stands.” One was the U.S.; the other — Pakistan.
Even more dramatic, almost a quarter of all respondents see capitalism as “fatally flawed, and feel a new economic system is needed.” In France 43 percent hold that view, in Brazil, 35 percent.
And now to socialism. What is it? Maybe it’s harder to define. Hitler used the term “national socialism” for his brand of fascism in Germany, which explains a lot about its bad name today.
But “democratic socialism” or “social democracy” is commonly used to describe the Scandinavian countries, France, or the Germany of today in which government plays an essential role in making sure that all citizens have the essentials to thrive: Unemployment benefits in Germany, to take but one example, offer about two-thirds of previous pay, compared to less than half in the U.S.; and they last much longer.
Americans see anything labeled socialism as restricting citizens’ freedoms.
So, let’s add “freedom” to our list of terms that need our immediate attention.
For, if freedom means in part enjoying power over one’s destiny, workers in Germany arguably have much more freedom than U.S. workers.
How’s that? “German workers are at the table when the big decisions are made, and elect people who still watch and sometimes check the businessmen, they have been able to hang on to their manufacturing sector,” unlike in the U.S., observes lawyer Thomas Geoghegan in the March issue of Harper’s.
They get to the table via widespread “works councils,” giving clerks and other low-level employees a voice in management — deciding, for example, on store hours and who takes which shift, as well as on layoffs, and more. “Co-determined boards” are another feature of German social democracy. Mainly in firms with more than 2,000 employees, clerks elect half of the members on these governing boards. “Clerks have all this power without owning any shares!” notes Geoghegan. “In this stakeholder [rather than shareholder] model, they need only act on their interests as ‘the workers.’” Unions also provide workers a greater say over their lives and almost half of Germany’s workforce are union members.
In all these ways, German workers arguably have more control over their work lives than any country in the world. At the same time, since 2003, and with less than a third of our population, Germany has held first or second place in world export sales.
What if, from now on, we used the term “democratic economy” to describe an approach with greater freedom for workers? And every time we read or hear someone use the terms capitalism or socialism, we simply ask: How do you define it? At least, we’d be igniting conversation that takes us beyond slogans. And, in the process, hopefully, we’d become better prepared to explore public policies that really could expand our freedom.
Frances Moore Lappé is the author of Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want (March 2010) and 17 other books, beginning with the three-million copy Diet for a Small Planet. Find more on living democracy at www.smallplanet.org. Small Planet Institute Senior Writer Stefan Sirucek contributed editorial support.
By Frances Moore Lappé
It feels like a break in the clouds.
Although the health care industry spent over $1 million a day lobbying last year and, tellingly, its stocks jumped once health insurance reform passed , the bill promises more options and greater protection to millions.
Clearly, we’ve made progress, but it’s just as clear that we must dig deeper — to our root political problem:
Private money in public politics.
In 2008 a winning House race cost an average of 1.1 million dollars, while a successful Senate bid cost 6.5 million. It’s no surprise that much of that money comes from industries with direct interests in major issues facing Congress—from banking to nuclear power. The Supreme Court in January mightily worsened the threat to democracy in its decision to open the door to unlimited corporate spending to influence campaigns. And even if newly proposed bills blunt the impact of this democracy-deadening decision, we’re still left with a Congress way too dependent on corporate underwriters.
Now’s the moment to go to the root of our democracy’s ill health
The great news is that we can build on the anger of Americans of all political stripes that our democracy is in the grip of private power. A full 90 percent of Americans believe corporations have too much influence in Washington and about 80% of Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike oppose the recent Supreme Court decision.
So could right and left come together in common purpose, reclaiming our democracy? We might start by reminding the Tea Party folks, for example, that nothing is more essentially American than fighting the collusion of government and monopoly power. It’s a question at the heart of my new book Getting a Grip2, so I asked Invisible Hand to product this 2-minute video of the real story of the Boston Tea Party:
It suggests that there is an answer. A proven way forward that will not be overturned by the Court. The best part is: Bills introducing the approach in congressional races are already gaining support in Congress.
It’s called the Fair Elections Now Act(S. 752 and H.R. 1826 ). In the House the effort has 138 co-sponsors, including Republican Mike Castle. These are living, breathing bills we can actively champion with a good chance of passing before November.
It’s a practical solution that’s already working in three states.
Maine and Arizona have had Fair Elections in place for over a decade, already altering the political landscape in powerful ways–allowing everyday people like teachers or waitresses, without corporate backers, to run for office and win. Connecticut’s similar law took effect in 2008.
Fair Elections draw voters and candidates into the process and keep money out and supporting them is just one of the practical things that every citizen can do to help loosen the grip of private influence. So talk to people. Go to a Coffee Party meeting and figure out what you and your neighbors can do right now.
Now that we’ve passed the first step in health insurance reform, why not address the health of our democracy? At the very root, it’s private money in politics that’s making our democracy sick.
Let’s stop treating the symptoms.
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Frances Moore Lappé is the author of the just-released Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want. She is the author of 17 other books, beginning with the three-million copy Diet for a Small Planet. Small Planet Institute Senior Writer Stefan Sirucek contributed editorial support. Find more on living democracy at the Small Planet Institute.
