“Taking Back the Political Landscape”: An Interview with William Greider

William Greider, a former Washington Post editor, writes about politics for Rolling Stone. His new book, Who Will Tell the People (Simon and Schuster), probes the inner workings of a failed democracy. He spoke with Bob Hall about money and politics.

You talk about campaign contributions not as bribery, but as performing a more subtle role in solidifying “relationships.”

Well, there’s always been money in politics. It’s more visible now. And what you see is this: As politicians get less connected to ordinary voters, they become more dependent on the people who finance campaigns. The relationships develop not over one election or one roll call vote, but over long periods of time. You become buddies and favors flow back and forth. If you think about it in human terms, you don’t have to “buy” lawmakers to get what you want.

The other side of it, which is not so human, is a kind of constant threat to anybody who steps out of line. Take the case of Mike Synar of Oklahoma. As a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, he’s been very aggressive in attacking the non-enforcement of laws in the executive branch. Over time that’s made certain industrial sectors very mad. And they told him, very explicitly, “We’d like you to be more cooperative or we’re going to have to finance your opponent.” And that’s what they’re doing.

A lot of members of Congress, threatened with defeat by a well-financed opponent, will accommodate. They’ll back off. They may still make the same speeches, but they’ll give it away in committee, or find ways to make adjustments that, unless you’re watching very closely over time, are hard to see.

 

So the intimidation gets quite specific if someone goes over the line?

Yeah, and a politician never quite knows where the line is. And most of them, by their very nature, don’t want to find out. They want it both ways. This is most visible on the basic issues, like the fight around raising the minimum wage. In 1989 the Democrats mostly favored the raise, but if it got too high, they knew they’d anger a lot of business sectors. In the end, they raised the minimum wage an inconsequential amount; they got the symbolism of fighting for workers, and business didn’t get hurt.

 

So money also works to contain the debate or limit the range of options on the table.

That goes on mostly out of sight. Even the most liberal campaigns still find themselves trapped by the question, “If we stand up and say this, what will it do to our fundraising?” It’s usually not said that explicitly. As Bob Shrum, a Democratic campaign consultant, told me, it’s usually phrased: “What’s the responsible position on this issue?”

To me, this is the most debilitating effect of campaign money. It keeps new ideas from being articulated in a way that might arouse the public. People never get educated about issues. When they get their act together, people can overcome the advantages of money. But how do you get the public engaged in the real questions of government? That’s what the money blocks. And campaign contributions are just a part of that — and maybe not even the most important part.

 

What is the more important part?

I think the direct investment which corporations and others make in the broader political process is more debilitating. By that I mean everything from think tanks to trade associations to charitable giving to lobbyists to their propaganda on television. These all work to limit the public debate and manipulate decisions. If you look across the whole spectrum of what they spend money on, campaign money is a minor part.

 

How do you view the post-Watergate reforms?

One of the reasons I’m not so zealous about campaign finance reform is that I remember what happened the last time. It’s true that the 1974 legislation forced things into the open. That was a great contribution. But it did not contain money — in fact, it gave a kind of cohesion to campaign money that probably hadn’t existed before. When money was floating around in black bags, it at least couldn’t be put explicitly on the table the way it is now; it was loose. Those interests are better organized today.

The incentive for creating this corporate infrastructure over the last 20 years went beyond campaign financing. In the late 1960s and 1970s, we went through a great era of reform legislation — civil rights, the environment, worker safety. Those laws were quite different than earlier regulatory laws in that they didn’t focus on one industry alone: They were general and national in scope.

So now you have a situation where coal companies and airlines and food processors and automakers have a reason to work together, because EPA or OSHA sets regulations for all of them. That gave corporate America a unifying purpose in politics. They put their resources together to shape the debate and block enforcement, and they’ve succeeded. To me, that’s the most interesting political development of the last generation.

It’s pointless and not very effective to rail at corporate America for having political power. They have political power because they need it; their bottom line is affected by government in very direct ways. What’s missing is anything that acts as the counterweight to that power. As the political parties lost touch with people, and the unions lost power, and other mediating institutions declined, the corporations filled all the available space. They seized the ground. That’s where we are now.

To effect a real change, we have to take back that landscape of politics. And you can’t do that very easily or overnight, or with a single presidential candidate.

 

It takes grassroots organizing, building our own infrastructure with our own set of political relationships.

Yes. It’s hard, but I think it is very possible. People have more assets than they may realize. That’s why I think the status quo is vulnerable.

The first asset — and it tends to get overlooked — is that on all the big issues, whether it’s wages or the environment or financial regulation, people are on the winning side in terms of true American values. The corporations are on the wrong end of the moral argument every time, and they know it. Secondly, electoral politics is so atrophied that anybody who enters the political arena with any kind of mobilized force of people, even a sliver minority, can disrupt the system and at least make it tremble.

 

What’s the best direction when it comes to the more narrow goal of campaign finance reforms — should public money replace private contributions?

I’m not even sure that’s a desirable goal, eliminating private money from politics. After all, money is part of the way we express ourselves. Obviously those who don’t have very much are at a great disadvantage. If you really want to change the dynamics, create a federal tax credit of $100 or even $200 for every family or citizen, and let them give that money to any sort of political activity they want, whether it’s a candidate or their local political club or the Sierra Club or ACORN or the NRA or the Democratic party. That would do more to balance the table than trying to put limits on corporate money, which generally don’t work anyway.

Citizen politics is poor. It can’t raise the resources to compete with these big behemoths. So let’s create an incentive for organizations to go directly to people, engage them in useful politics, and persuade them to contribute a piece of their $200.

That would set off some very creative dynamics. What would it do for the Democratic party, for example, if you said, “Look, you don’t have to go to these fat cats for your money. All you have to do is convince 10 million Americans that you’re real.”

It would also give people a chance to use the tax code to support their political activity — something the corporations now make use of in a dozen ways. Their trade associations, their lobbying expenses, their propaganda advertising, their hired consultants — it’s all deducted as a business expense. You or I can’t take the carfare to go to the state capitol off our taxes.

 

In your book, you also propose a rule to prevent politicians who accept money from the banking PACs from sitting on the banking committees.

Yeah, I think that’s very doable. I have a bunch of ideas like that in the book, but I have to preface them by saying, “I know this is a non-starter in our present politics.” Congress is not going to reorganize itself. It requires a mobilization of people willing to stand up for these or other ideas. If people use their imagination and step out of the usual categories, they’ll come up with many good ideas. That’s how change begins.