Dollarocracy (53 page)

23
. Richard K. Matthews,
The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson: A Revisionist View
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1984), 83.

24
. Aristotle,
Politics
, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Stilwell, KS: Digireads, 2005), 60. Aristotle of course was no friend of democracy; he was a supporter of an aristocratic constitution. Moreover, even the supporters of the
demos
in ancient Greece had in mind only male citizens, thereby excluding women and slaves. See Ellen Meiksins Wood and Neal Wood,
Class Ideology and Ancient Political Theory
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

25
. For an interesting argument that campaign spending led to profligate corruption and the end of the Roman Republic, see Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni, “How Political Campaign Spending Brought Down the Roman Republic,”
slate.com
, November 26, 2012.

26
. See Alexander Keyssar,
The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States
(New York: Basic Books, 2000), 15, 11.

27
. Jack N. Rakove, “James Madison and the Bill of Rights,” in
This Constitution: A Bicentennial Chronicle
(Washington, DC: Project '87 of the American Political Science Association and American Historical Association, Fall 1985).

28
. There has been much fine writing on the contested presidential election of 1800. We place a high value on Bernard A. Weisberger's
America Afire: Jefferson, Adams, and the First Contested Election
(New York: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2001).

29
. Cited in Juan Gonzalez and Joseph Torres,
News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media
(New York: Verso, 2011), 37.

30
. Sean Wilentz,
The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
(New York: Norton, 2005); and Sean Wilentz,
Andrew Jackson
(New York: Times Books, 2005).

31
. In exploring the history of campaign finance reform, we relied on many sources, including discussions with Professor Carin Clauss of the University of Wisconsin Law School, whose research on historic initiatives to clean up politics informed this chapter. She participated in the 1997 Heffernan Commission, which sought to develop a comprehensive plan for campaign finance reform in Wisconsin. The commission's work can be reviewed at
http://www.fightingbob.com/files/heffernan_commission_report.pdf
. We also relied on the terrific work of Robert G. Kaiser, whose “Citizen K Street: How Lobbying Became Washington's Biggest Business” series appeared in the
Washington Post
in April 2007. We also depended on Jill Lepore, “Money Talks: Who's Fighting for Campaign-Finance Reform?”
New Yorker
, July 10, 2012. Jeff Clement, whose work in this area has been groundbreaking and essential, wrote about some of these issues in his book
Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It
(San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2012); as did Thom Hartmann,
Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became “People”—and How You Can Fight Back
(San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2010).

32
. Quoted in Robert C. Nesbit,
Wisconsin: A History
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 364.

33
. Both quoted in Timothy Noah, “Mitt Romney: Crybaby Capitalist,”
New Republic
, July 16, 2012.

34
. Quoted in David D. Kirkpatrick, “Does Corporate Money Lead to Political Corruption?,”
New York Times
, January 23, 2010.

35
. Quoted in Jack Beatty,
Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865–1900
(New York: Knopf, 2007), xv.

36
. Theodore Roosevelt, “The Man with the Muck-Rake,” April 14, 1906,
http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/theodore-roosevelt-the-man-with-the-muck-rake-speech-text/
.

37
. David P. Thelen,
Robert M. La Follette and the Insurgent Spirit
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), 82.

38
. Theodore Roosevelt, “Political Assessments in the Coming Campaign,”
The Atlantic
, July 1892,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1892/07/political-assessments-in-the-coming-campaign/306067/?single_page=true
; Jack Beatty, “A Sisyphean History of Campaign Finance Reform: A Look at How We Ended Up Back Where We Began,”
The Atlantic
, July 2007; Beatty,
Age of Betrayal.

39
. See Beatty, “A Sisyphean History”; and Nancy Unger,
Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer
(Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2008).

40
. For biographical details and many of the quotes featured in this section, we relied on Wheeler's autobiography,
Yankee from the West: The Candid, Turbulent Life Story of the Yankee-Born U.S. Senator from Montana
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962); as well as on Richard T. Ruettens, “Burton K. Wheeler, 1905–1925: An Independent Liberal Under Fire” (MA thesis, University of Oregon, Eugene; 1957). Additionally, we relied on the archives of the
New York Times
, which covered Wheeler and the Montana fight extensively.

41
. Progressive Party, “Progressive Party Platform of 1924,” November 4, 1924,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29618
.

42
. Peter Overby, “A Century of U.S. Campaign Finance Law,” NPR, Web timeline, January 21, 2010,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121293380
; Kurt Hohenstein,
Coining Corruption: The Making of the American Campaign Finance System
(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007).

43
. Lyndon Johnson, “Statement by the President upon Signing the Foreign Investors Tax Act and the Presidential Election Fund Act, November 13, 1966,”
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=28030
.

44
. Tom Wicker, “Kennedy Orders Vote-Cost Study,”
New York Times
, October 5, 1961.

45
. “On Campaign Funds,”
New York Times
, April 22, 1962.

46
. Frank Church, “Campaign Money—How Much? From Whom?”
New York Times
, August 26, 1962.

47
. Ibid.

48
. Records of the Commission on Campaign Costs, which operated from October 4, 1961, to September 17, 1962, are contained in the Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, President's Office Files. Extensive coverage of the commission's work appeared in the
New York Times
in 1961 and 1962. Information
about Truman and Eisenhower can be found in Peter Braestrup, “2 Ex-Presidents Spurn Party Gifts; Tax Incentives to Increase Contributions Backed by Eisenhower and Truman,”
New York Times
, May 27, 1962.

49
. Kennedy appointed Alexander Heard of the University of North Carolina to chair the commission. See Alexander Heard,
The Costs of Democracy: Financing American Political Campaigns
(Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1962).

50
. Braestrup, “2 Ex-Presidents.”

51
. Editorial,
New York Times
, May 24, 1962.

52
. Wicker, “Kennedy Orders Vote-Cost Study.”

53
. Lyndon Johnson, “Special Message to the Congress on Election Reform: The Political Process in America,” May 25, 1967,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=28268
.

54
. “A Pointless Proposal,”
Wall Street Journal
, June 9, 1967.

55
. See Jefferson Cowie,
Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class
(New York: New Press, 2010).

56
. Public Citizen,
http://www.citizen.org
. Still true to its founding principles, Public Citizen is in the forefront of movements to reform media and politics with an eye toward reducing the influence of corporations and increasing the power of citizens.

57
. George McGovern,
An American Journey
(New York: Random House, 1974).

58
. Ron Dellums, with H. Lee Halterman,
Lying Down with the Lions: A Public Life from the Streets of Oakland to the Halls of Power
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2000); Suzanne Braun Levine and Mary Thom,
Bella Abzug: How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed Off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the Rights of Women and Workers and for the Planet, and Shook Up Politics Along the Way
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007); “Biography of Justin Ravitz,” Ravitz Mediation Services LLC,
http://ravitzmediation.com/id1.html
.

59
. Federal Election Commission,
Federal Campaign Finance Laws
,
http://www.fec.gov/law/feca/feca.shtml
. On the FEC and FECA historical background, see
http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/fecfeca.shtml#Historical_Background
.

60
. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein,
All the President's Men
, 2nd ed. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994); Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein,
The Final Days
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004).

61
. Ben A. Franklin, “Senate Votes Top on Political Gifts; $3,000 Ceiling on Donations to Candidate Put in Bill—Parties Could Get More Senate Votes Lid on Political Donations; Future Is Uncertain; Disenchantment Clear,”
New York Times
, July 27, 1973.

62
. Andy Kroll, “Follow the Dark Money,”
Mother Jones
, July/August 2012, 19–20.

63
. John Gardner, “John W. Gardner Launches Membership Campaign for Common Cause,” Common Cause About Us archives, August 18, 1970,
http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=4860209
.

64
. David Vogel,
Fluctuating Fortunes: The Political Power of Business in America
(New York: Basic Books, 1989), 59.

65
. See, for example, Morton Mintz and Jerry S. Cohen, with an Introduction by Ralph Nader,
America, Inc.: Who Owns and Operates the United States
(New York: Dell, 1971).

66
. Michael Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki,
The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission
(New York: New York University Press, 1975), 74, 75, 79, 83, 113.

67
. Ibid., 114.

68
. Quoted at
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/10/06–5
.

69
. Lost to history, for example, has been the very impressive burgeoning media reform movement of the 1970s. See Pamela Draves, ed.,
Citizens Media Directory
(Washington, DC: National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting, 1977).

70
. For an excellent treatment of the transformation of the Republican Party, see Geoffrey Kabaservice,
Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation in the Republican Party from Eisenhower to the Tea Party
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

71
. Norman Ornstein, “Mitch McConnell vs. Himself on Disclosure Issues,”
Roll Call
, June 20, 2012.

72
. Matthew A. Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg,
Downsizing Democracy
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 49.

73
. Quoted in John Nichols, “The Secret of Bernie Sanders's Success,”
The Nation
, December 4, 2012.

74
. Quoted in “What Election 2012 Reveals About America and Its Shifting Racial Faultlines,”
bill moyers.com
, November 9, 2012.

75
. See Steven M. Telese,
The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).

76
. Quoted in Sebastian Meyer, “Political Parties Are Basically Bank Accounts,”
InTheseTimes.com
, November 1, 2012.

77
. “Romney Agrees with Obama . . . on Everything,” Huffington Post video, October 23, 2012,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/22/romney-obama-debate_n_2004105.html
; Ryan Grim and Joshua Hersh, “Presidential Debate: Obama, Romney Agree on Foreign Policy,” Huffington Post, October 23, 2012.

78
. Alex Seitz-Wald, “Everyone Hates Citizens United: A New Poll Shows the Vast Majority of Americans Think There's Too Much Money in Politics,”
Salon
, October 25, 2012. The poll cited here was conducted by the firm Bannon Communications for the Corporate Reform Coalition.

1
. Jeff Zeleny, “Mogul's Latest Foray Courts Jews for the G.O.P.,”
New York Times
, July 25, 2012.

2
. Calvin Coolidge, speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington, DC, January 17, 1924; Claude Fuess,
Calvin Coolidge: The Man from Vermont
(Boston: Little Brown, 1940), 358.

3
. Coolidge speech.

4
. Donald Trump, with Tony Schwartz,
The Art of the Deal
(New York: Ballantine Books, 2004).

5
. The site's still up:
www.TrumpHQ.com
.

6
. Dean Debnam, “The GOP's Front-Runner Is . . . Donald Trump?,” Public Policy Polling, April 14, 2011.