God and Country
by PHIL JONES
According to a recent story in the Washington Post, President Obama expects to raise a billion dollars (1,000 million) for his 2012 presidential campaign. Remember 2004, when George W. Bush shocked the political world by announcing his intention to forego federal matching money and raise $200 million? That’s chump change now. In 2008, Barack Obama’s campaign raised more than $200 million before he was even nominated. The total expenditures of the 2008 Obama campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org, topped $714 million. Effectively, the cost of winning the presidency tripled in four years.
Yes, the election of Barack Obama was historic in the racial sense. But in another sense, it was just business as usual. The candidate who raised and spent the most money won. The one with the most money gets to better saturate the media with his or her “narrative,” and the American people apparently believe whatever they see and hear repeated the most often.
So it would not be surprising to see the cost go up again. But I wonder where President Obama expects the money to come from, this time around?
I made no secret of my support for Barack Obama in 2008. My reason was simple. I regarded him as our last, best hope for campaign finance reform. Without such reform, American democracy is increasingly nothing but a sham and a puppet show. Without such reform, elected officials will continue to be increasingly loyal to the special interests who fund their campaigns, rather than the constituents who elected them. And that defeats the whole purpose of democracy, which is to hold the government accountable to the people!
That last, best hope went flying out the window when Obama, flush with hundreds of millions more dollars than he had expected, reneged on a campaign reform pact he had made with John McCain prior to either of them getting nominated. Obama did what any politician would do. He took the path that gave him the best chance of winning, but in so doing, lost all credibility on the subject of campaign finance. Suddenly, the campaign was no longer about changing the way Washington does business, as it supposedly had been from the beginning. Then, as soon as he was nominated, Obama began taking PAC money – notably from Goldman Sachs – and after he was elected, guess what? Goldman Sachs got everything they wanted from the new administration. Surprise!
Then came the disastrous Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case. Corporations are now allowed to give unlimited amounts of money, and it is not even traceable. Democrats did absolutely nothing about this. Evidently, they calculate that they will get their fair share of the corporate booty. Good luck on that.
Time was when the common man could compete with millionaires, because there were so many of us and so few of them. But competing against billion-dollar corporations is out of the question. By donating just two percent of their corporate profits, Coca Cola alone could outspend all of the 2008 candidates. All of our elections from now on will be decided by corporations, in secret. For the average American, donating to political candidates is a complete waste of money – money that is increasingly hard-earned.
I gave heavily to Obama in 2008, in hopes that it would never be necessary again. But if I am in any way typical of Obama’s constituency, he will have a very hard time raising the kind of money he raised in 2008, because I don’t plan to give a penny to any presidential candidate, ever again.
As far as I can tell, the United States government is hopelessly corrupt, and America is now a democracy in outward form only. Sure, we still get to vote, but our choices are determined in such a way that no matter who wins, the same people rule. Just with different puppets.
Those are harsh words. I only wish they were less true.
