After the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC that removed restrictions on campaign expenditures for corporations in the name of free speech, the death of democracy was declared.
Democracy became for sale. The ruling was a death sentence, a “supremely wrong” decision. “Undisclosed millionaires can swing elections” without the American people knowing. Dark times finally reached the American experiment.
Except it didn’t. Citizens United wasn’t a threat to American elections, and the hyperbolic rhetoric hasn’t reflected the American political reality since the ruling.
The 2016 election has been a textbook case in why money doesn’t buy elections. A Bloomberg analysis of campaign spending and poll results showed the massive gap between spending and electoral success. The failure of Jeb Bush to connect with voters, despite the hundreds of millions spent by him and on his behalf, is an anecdote that shows democracy still lives.
“Most Americans believe that money buys elections. They believe that when donors give money to politicians, the donors thereby purchase friendly political policies …. To laypeople, all this seems obviously true, yet the political scientists who study this issue (and, for what it’s worth, tend to lean left and vote Democrat) generally believe this is all false,” Jason Brennan, a philosopher at Georgetown University, said in an email.
Populist insurgencies in both parties don’t understand that. Bernie Sanders constantly criticizes the Citizens United ruling, and “getting big money out of politics and restoring democracy” is the third issue on his campaign page.
“In the year 2016, with a political campaign finance system that is corrupt and increasingly controlled by billionaires and special interests, I fear very much that, in fact, government of the people, by the people, and for the people is beginning to perish in the United States of America,” Sanders said.
Positioning himself as the hero who can save America from corporations, Sanders declares himself to be on the side of the people.
Donald Trump takes a similar line, boasting that his wealth makes him independent of the political machine.
“I know the system better than anybody. The fact is that whether it’s Jeb, or Hillary, or any of ’em—they’re all controlled by these people! And the people that control them are the special interests, the lobbyists and the donors,” he said. “You know what’s nice about me? I don’t need anybody’s money.”
Trump, in his imagination, is the outsider who will save America from the suspicious establishment powerbrokers who have caused American decline.
Except candidates don’t succeed because shadowy figures bankroll them.
“Campaign spending does not make winners; it chases them. Winners do not win because they raise more money. They raise more money because they are going to win,” Brennan said.
Cause and effect, in the accepted wisdom about elections, are reversed in the popular imagination.
Lobbyists and special interests engage in rent seeking, where they try to influence laws and regulations to benefit themselves, but that’s done with elected officials. In elections, politicians try to court voters and deep-pocketed donors, but those politicians need “to give voters what they want,” as Brennan said. If they don’t, no amount of funding will save them, as Jeb Bush found out in 2016.
Despite the work of political scientists, the Citizens United bugaboo stays relevant, as groups still rally to reverse Citizens United.
“Most people want to believe that politics would work out well if only someone wasn’t sabotaging the system,” Brennan said. “It’s akin to superstitious people blaming droughts on witches. People have a hard time understanding that bad things (or good things) can happen as the result of spontaneous order rather than someone’s intention.”
Results aren’t dictated by intentions. It doesn’t take “corruption” (Sanders) or “special interests” (Trump) to make political solutions fail. Some problems are too complex and difficult for a law to solve.
That doesn’t mean the elections and voting couldn’t be improved. Making election day a holiday and cultivating a more-informed electorate could boost voter participation rates and help politicians give voters what they want. While that could make the electorate more representative of the country, however, it’s no guarantee that more problems would be fixed through law.
