The Presidency Can't be Bought

We share widespread concern over the influence of money in politics. This is a far cry, however, from believing that the system has been permanently rigged by the “billionaire class.” Ironically, this year’s presidential campaign, fueled so powerfully by such accusations of total corruption, has done much to disprove the claim.

We understand the distortion of policymaking that the symbiotic relationship between candidates and donors engenders. Those pernicious consequences are often most pronounced not at the presidential level, but in corners of our democracy where the stakes for special interest groups are high and public scrutiny is relatively low: state and local elections, Capitol Hill conference committees, regulatory agency rulemakings. This is why we favor sensible limitations on donations, coupled with maximum disclosure of where the money comes from. That is to say, we favor more regulation than the Supreme Court permitted in its 2010 Citizens United decision. We also support reforms, such as that proposed by Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Maryland, that might allow candidates to spend less time dialing for dollars and more with constituents.

But the failure of former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s campaign, and the well-oiled success of the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, suggest that tycoons cannot simply buy themselves a president. As of Feb. 20, Bush, plus “independent” groups of supporters, had amassed$157.6 million and spent nearly all of it in the Republican nominating battle - all for naught. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Sanders, a socialist, had raised more than $90 million in mostly small donations, enabling him to mount a credible populist challenge to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

The unpredicted success of the campaigns of Sanders and Donald Trump, the self-funding billionaire who drubbed Bush, casts doubt on their own claims on the stump, to the effect that American democracy has been permanently purchased by special interests. Region, race and candidate personality play a role. Insurgents can be heard, contrary to much rhetoric. Most of all, while we disagree with many of Sanders’s ideas, not to mention Trump’s, the success of their campaigns show that ideas and policies still do matter in politics, sometimes more than money.

The deep irony is that their exploitation of public cynicism about politics - in different ways and with different constituencies - may be breeding more of it. A more positive result of recent events would be to encourage more skepticism among future candidates and donors about the true power of money, and, therefore, more creativity about how they raise and spend it, beyond the current campaign model, dominated as it is by donors and consultants. When this ugly campaign is finally over, there may be a place for well-designed new rules on campaign finance - and also for more realism.