First came Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid somberly testifying
before the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Reid espoused
the evils upon us all from big and dark money infiltrating the American
political system. And of course he named names in case anyone doubted his villains’
identities.
Mr. Reid’s
arguments are familiar to even the casual observer of the politics of political
money. Indeed his testimony merely amplified the cottage industry refrains of
politicians, nonprofit
groups, and academics
that raise
money and wield political influence decrying how others raise money and
wield political influence.
Plutocrats,
these “reformers” counsel—unsatisfied with their already enormous wealth—are
trying to “buy”
America and “drown out” the voice of the little guy. Money buys “access” and
“undue influence,” corrupting
the system and threating the very foundation of democracy. Indeed so dire
the threat, it can only be remedied by overturning a key a portion of the Bill
of Rights—an unprecedented move according to famed First Amendment lawyer Floyd
Abrams who testified
at the same hearing.
Mr. Reid is,
of course, wrong. Money does factor into electoral and legislative outcomes,
but it is far from the determining or even most important factor. And proof is
more abundant than a recent Virginia primary where the loser outspent his
opponent 26-1.
In 2012, only
20% of competitive Senate campaigns with an overall spending advantage won.
The latest social science bolsters this thesis, a fact acknowledged from as diverse
sources as former Obama White House Counsel Bob
Bauer and the First Amendment friendly Center
for Competitive Politics.
But unlike
Mr. Reid’s empirically challenged posturing, genuine threats to the American political
system exist. IRS Commissioner Jack Koskinen recently exemplified one in Congressional
testimony about missing documents House investigators had subpoenaed months ago.
Mr. Koskinen sat defiant
as he ducked, parried, and obfuscated. His answers, and the arrogance
with which he conveyed them, are emblematic of a bureaucracy whose dual mission
is self-preservation and the ardor for power; what Peggy Noonan called
“the ongoing shakedown operation that is the relationship of the individual and
the federal government.”
No one versed
in the economic theory of public
choice would be surprised at IRS bad faith. The theory states government
actors, like private ones, make decisions based on self-interest before public
benefit or certainly altruism. Instead of profit motive, their currency is
expanding the regulatory domain. But what (allegedly) happened at the IRS is
worse than bureaucrats looking out for number
one. It is the systematic targeting of a president’s political enemies,
base disregard of Supreme Court holdings, and the widespread circumvention
of federal law in the cover up. And all of this accepts that no one at the
White House was involved, a perhaps unlikely scenario considering key IRS
figures Sarah
Ingram and Nikole
Flax were frequent White House visitors.
If proven
true, this Latin American-esque disregard
for the rule of law would truly threaten the democratic process and likely
cause Americans to lose faith in federal political institutions.
Indeed Americans
already sense something is fundamentally wrong. Poll results are welcomingly
bipartisan. Only 11% of independents and 20% of Democrats find
plausible the IRS explanation that subpoenaed materials accidently
disappeared into an unrecoverable internet ether for seven
different people.
This lack of
trust is justified. The IRS has repeatedly lied its way through the scandal
from the original whopper
about rouge Cincinnati
employees to its repeated stance that officials would turn over all emails only to finally be told they
had only been turning over those that matched certain internally decided search
terms.
As trust in
government institutions continues to plummet,
the sad reality is real threats to democracy get treated as temporary “controversies.”
Meanwhile excuses to give a government no one seems to trust more power and
opportunity for abuse are treated as “solutions.” Such is the political world
circa 2014.
By Paul Jossey
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