McCutcheon v. FEC

Slowly, the most powerful and important democracy in history is turning from the power and influence of the people in general to the power and influence of a select few – from a real democracy into an oligarchy.

The Supreme Court handed down a split 5-4 decision this week. It essentially removed one of the barriers to the influence of money on our political system. For the skeptic that might not seem like a big deal. From the perspective of many there isn’t much difference between what things are like now and what things will be like should we have a system where wealthy individuals can spend however they like on elections.

Admittedly I don’t draw as sharp a contrast as many do. I don’t think money has as much of a direct effect on politics as many assert, and the extent to which it does has a lot to do with the candidates we vote for and our own willful ignorance as voters. The fact is that as the ones who ultimately decide, we have the ability to counter the effects of any dollar figure some millionaire or billionaire puts up behind any number of candidates by simply informing ourselves with facts and acting accordingly.

That is an ideal I would like to believe in, and the proponents of “money as speech” similarly would at least attest to this ideal, even if one doubts their true belief in it. Nevertheless, I also believe in practicality. The practical fact of the matter is that money does have a disproportionate effect on our political system. It buys influence, it buys attention, and it buys loyalty and votes from our politicians. Currently the only real counter to that is another pot of money.

The decision from the court this week does not remove the limit in dollars that the campaign finance reform established, the $5200 limit. But before now that limit applied to what an individual could contribute over the course of an entire 2-year election cycle. Now, that limit applies only to one candidate. So, instead of $5200 for the entire cycle on one candidate, you can spend millions and millions of dollars, cutting checks of $5200 to any number of candidates you want.

The way supporters of the decision frame it, this removes the limitations on speech. However, analysis of even the last election cycle showed that of the millions of people who donate to campaigns, only a paltry 630 hit up against the existing limit. This is to say nothing of the fact that by donating to the political action committees (PACs) that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling created, many of the wealthiest in the nation circumvented these limits, as the PACs affiliate themselves primarily behind individual candidates.

What this decision does structurally is not particularly massive. It alone is not responsible for a huge shift in our democratic process away from the overbearing influence of wealth. But what it does do is continue that shift, where increasingly the wealthiest among us can finance whomever they want in whatever office they want, and that individual has little to no incentive to heed the voices of anyone else.

The Sheldon Adelson, Koch brothers, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffets of the world, no matter their politics or individual views, should not hold ultimate sway over the collective burden of choosing our representatives in government. We had the option at this nation’s founding to create a system that explicitly favored the wealthy. The extent to which it did so had been a continual struggle to rectify. Over the last decade or two, however, we’ve increasingly headed in the opposite direction. The worst part of it all is that the very system that is being twisted is the only one that enables us to rectify the matter. Only by electing the right people to office, where they then make laws and appoint or confirm nominees to the courts, can we change the ideological balance that has created this situation. But when the system has been distorted against that end, how then do you fix it?