320 Years of History
Gold Member
"I give to everybody. They do whatever I want. It's true."
-- Donald Trump
-- Donald Trump
I'm sure that everyone who doesn't have tens, hundreds or more thousands of dollars to toss at politicians don't like the idea that political access can be purchased. Why Americans feel/think political access would differ from much else is best explained, however, as either the ultimate charade of naivete (see also: naive realism) or denial. I can't say which. Maybe it's both. It's certainly not neither.
One person who is not at all deluded by the romantic notion of "government of, by and for the people" rather than "of, by and for certain people" is Donald Trump. This should be no surprise to anyone who watched last year GOP primary debates. As Andrew McCarthy writes in the National Review,
It's hard to know what is worse: Donald Trump bragging about paying off politicians, or the cheering by Republican-debate audiences when Donald Trump brags about paying off politicians.
Even if you’re not the queasy type, how nauseating to watch a crowd of people, many of whom would tell you they’re strong law-and-order conservatives, giddily applauding as a guy confesses that he’s the corrupter who makes the corruption work. “I was a businessman,” Trump smarmed at a debate earlier this year. He was being pressed about the piles of dough he has deposited in Democratic coffers through the years — for his pals the Clintons (including the Clinton Foundation), Schumer, Reid, Pelosi, Cuomo, Rahm, and the rest of the gang.
“I give to everybody. When they call, I give.” Yup, although more to the progressives, to implement the very policies he now complains are destroying the country. And why? Trump’s allocution continued: “You know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them, and they are there for me. . . . And that’s a broken system.”
Well, yeah, when you spend years breaking something, it tends to get broken.
Rival Rand Paul needled, “You’ve donated to several Democratic candidates. You explained away those donations saying you did that to get business-related affairs. And you said recently, quote, ‘When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.’” This is the point where the guy suspected of bribery, if he can afford a lawyer (or a million lawyers!), takes the Fifth . . . or at least whines, “You’re taking my words out of context!”
Not The Donald. He grins and squeals, “You better believe it.” And the crowd eats it up. Just as they did in Iowa when he brayed, “I’ve got to give to them, because when I want something, I get it. When I call, they kiss my ass.”
Now here's the crux of the problem: Trump has stated that the patronage model is a broken model. Okay, fine. What's he going to do to change it? As with nearly every political issue, Trump is long on telling us what's wrong, and super short on ideas he'll share for how to fix it. In all this time, after all the "I'm self funding" talk that stopped being so right after he clinched the GOP nomination, and even now as he daily lambastes Mrs. Clinton over the Clinton Foundation, what specific approaches have you heard the man identify as means to fix the broken model? “I give to everybody. When they call, I give.” Yup, although more to the progressives, to implement the very policies he now complains are destroying the country. And why? Trump’s allocution continued: “You know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them, and they are there for me. . . . And that’s a broken system.”
Well, yeah, when you spend years breaking something, it tends to get broken.
Rival Rand Paul needled, “You’ve donated to several Democratic candidates. You explained away those donations saying you did that to get business-related affairs. And you said recently, quote, ‘When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.’” This is the point where the guy suspected of bribery, if he can afford a lawyer (or a million lawyers!), takes the Fifth . . . or at least whines, “You’re taking my words out of context!”
Not The Donald. He grins and squeals, “You better believe it.” And the crowd eats it up. Just as they did in Iowa when he brayed, “I’ve got to give to them, because when I want something, I get it. When I call, they kiss my ass.”
Now I happen to think that Trump realized he opened his mouth too quickly during the debate. He's super rich and he all but admitted to using his wealth to buy influence. No surprise there, but what have you heard along the line of leveling the playing field as goes rich folks' ability to do that? Nothing is what I've heard of late.
Richard North Pattinson explains why.
Though the wealthy tend to be more socially liberal than the country as a whole, among the majority [of wealthy folks] social concerns do not rank high. The issues they care about most are economic and relate, sometimes intimately, to a level of affluence which sets them wholly apart. On those issues, the wealthy tend to be quite conservative — twice as likely to be Republicans as Democrats — and hold views directly at odds with popular opinion. At least within the GOP, guess who wins.
This explains the Republicans’ social dichotomy and, more broadly, its current crack-up. In order to advance an agenda of tax cuts and other benefits for the wealthy, the party’s donor classes have tacitly supported hard-right social policies and rhetoric which stokes the resentment of struggling middle class and blue-collar whites.
Thus the party follows the agenda of evangelicals and other social conservatives. In terms of money or inconvenience, this costs the rich nothing at all — after all, any daughter of wealth who wants a ready and safe abortion can get one.
Similarly, it costs them nothing for the GOP to suggest to struggling Americans that their problems originate with other people — liberals, bureaucrats, Democrats, immigrants and minorities, starting with our own president. The list of straw men is endless, and includes everyone save themselves. But on economic issues, it is the wealthy — not the mass of Americans, no matter how great their numbers or their needs — who call the tune.
This explains the Republicans’ social dichotomy and, more broadly, its current crack-up. In order to advance an agenda of tax cuts and other benefits for the wealthy, the party’s donor classes have tacitly supported hard-right social policies and rhetoric which stokes the resentment of struggling middle class and blue-collar whites.
Thus the party follows the agenda of evangelicals and other social conservatives. In terms of money or inconvenience, this costs the rich nothing at all — after all, any daughter of wealth who wants a ready and safe abortion can get one.
Similarly, it costs them nothing for the GOP to suggest to struggling Americans that their problems originate with other people — liberals, bureaucrats, Democrats, immigrants and minorities, starting with our own president. The list of straw men is endless, and includes everyone save themselves. But on economic issues, it is the wealthy — not the mass of Americans, no matter how great their numbers or their needs — who call the tune.
Trump's silence on the matter of campaign financing while daily ranting about the Clinton Foundation is surprising. Indeed, the Clinton Foundation issue all but begs for Trump to share his policy proposals to fix the system. But he doesn't. Why? The answer is obvious: he doesn't want to change the system. What he wants is a system where folks who are merely rich, one percenters to be sure and more than rich enough to live quite well, are prohibited from obtaining political leadership roles. You've seen his autocratic style; you know what he wants in this regard too. He wants "rule by billionaires" only.
Sidebar:
Bernie Sanders thinks the campaign finance system is broken and he proposed specific reforms. He even got them incorporated into the Democrats' platform.
Those are the Dems' ideas for how to solve the problem. At least one alternative is staring Trump in the face and he has yet to mention it: require major networks to provide free political airtime equal to that which they provided for free to Trump and his competitors during the 2016 primary and general election campaigns. The networks have already given all that free coverage, they even did it willfully and they still are, so there's no question that they can profitably do so again. All they need to do is reserve the time so that it's available for candidates to use for "whatever" - ads, speeches, debates, etc.-- instead of flooding us with "the talking heads."
What does that do? Well, for one thing it dramatically reduces the cost of mounting a campaign. That's a huge step in the right direction, IMO, for it means that it takes less money to be heard. That's not a bad thing, especially for "Betty."
End of sidebar.- Constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s decisions in Citizens United and Buckley v. Valeo. [I'd settle for legislation or the Court merely reversing itself. An amendment would be nice, but do you really want to wait that long?]
- By legislation or executive order end secret, unaccountable money in politics by requiring significantly more disclosure and transparency.
- Implement a small donor matching public financing system to amplify the voices of the American people. [Okay, but this measure without a couple of the others listed isn't going to do a damn thing to give "Betty M. Class" any more of a voice with any given policymaker.]
- Overhaul and strengthen the Federal Election Commission so that there is real enforcement of campaign finance laws. [This is both the simplest and hardest to achieve. Simple because all that's really needed is to remove one commissioner or add a commissioner. Hard because having an even number of commissioners benefits both parties.]
- Eliminate super PACs.
What does that do? Well, for one thing it dramatically reduces the cost of mounting a campaign. That's a huge step in the right direction, IMO, for it means that it takes less money to be heard. That's not a bad thing, especially for "Betty."
