Money has made Americans sick of politics. What we can do about it.
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Robert Reich Robertreich.org
Americans are sick of politics. Only 13 percent approve of the job Congress is doing, a near record low. The President鈥檚 approval ratings are also in the basement.
A large portion of the public doesn鈥檛 even bother voting. Only 57.5 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots in the 2012 presidential election.聽
Put simply, most Americans feel powerless, and assume the political game is fixed. So why bother?聽
A new聽聽scheduled to be published in this fall by Princeton鈥檚 Martin Gilens and Northwestern University鈥檚 Benjamin Page confirms our worst suspicions.
Gilens and Page analyzed 1,799 policy issues in detail, determining the relative influence on them of economic elites, business groups, mass-based interest groups, and average citizens.
Their conclusion: 鈥淭he preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.鈥�
Instead, lawmakers respond to the policy demands of wealthy individuals and monied business interests 鈥� those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.
Before you鈥檙e tempted to say 鈥渄uh,鈥� wait a moment. Gilens鈥� and Page鈥檚 data come from the period 1981 to 2002. This was before the Supreme Court opened the floodgates to big money in 鈥淐itizens United,鈥� prior to SuperPACs, and before the Wall Street bailout.
So it鈥檚 likely to be even worse now.
But did the average citizen ever have much power? The eminent journalist and commentator Walter Lippman argued in his 1922 book 鈥淧ublic Opinion鈥� that the broad public didn鈥檛 know or care about public policy. Its consent was 鈥渕anufactured鈥� by an elite that manipulated it. 鈥淚t is no longer possible 鈥� to believe in the original dogma of democracy,鈥� Lippman concluded.
Yet American democracy seemed robust compared to other nations that in the first half of the twentieth century succumbed to communism or totalitarianism.
Political scientists after World War II hypothesized that even though the voices of individual Americans counted for little, most people belonged to a variety of interest groups and membership organizations 鈥� clubs, associations, political parties, unions 鈥� to which politicians were responsive.
鈥淚nterest-group pluralism,鈥� as it was dubbed, thereby channeled the views of individual citizens, and made American democracy function.
What鈥檚 more, the political power of big corporations and Wall Street was offset by the power of labor unions, farm cooperatives, retailers, and smaller banks.
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith approvingly dubbed it 鈥渃ountervailing power.鈥� These alternative power centers ensured that America鈥檚 vast middle and working classes received a significant share of the gains from economic growth.
Starting in 1980, something profoundly changed. It wasn鈥檛 just that big corporations and wealthy individuals became more politically potent, as Gilens and Page document. It was also that other interest groups began to wither.
Grass-roots membership organizations shrank because Americans had less time for them. As wages stagnated, most people had to devote more time to work in order to makes ends meet. That included the time of wives and mothers who began streaming into the paid workforce to prop up family incomes.
At the same time, union membership plunged because corporations began sending jobs abroad and fighting attempts to unionize. (Ronald Reagan helped legitimized these moves when he fired striking air traffic controllers.)
Other centers of countervailing power 鈥� retailers, farm cooperatives, and local and regional banks 鈥� also lost ground to national discount chains, big agribusiness, and Wall Street. Deregulation sealed their fates.
Meanwhile, political parties stopped representing the views of most constituents. As the costs of campaigns escalated, parties morphing from state and local membership organizations into national fund-raising machines.
We entered a vicious cycle in which political power became more concentrated in monied interests that used the power to their advantage 鈥� getting tax cuts, expanding tax loopholes, benefiting from corporate welfare and free-trade agreements, slicing safety nets, enacting anti-union legislation, and reducing public investments.
These moves further concentrated economic gains at the top, while leaving out most of the rest of America.
No wonder Americans feel powerless. No surprise we鈥檙e sick of politics, and many of us aren鈥檛 even voting.
But if we give up on politics, we鈥檙e done for. Powerlessness is a self-fulfilling prophesy.
The only way back toward a democracy and economy that work for the majority is for most of us to get politically active once again, becoming organized and mobilized.
We have to establish a new countervailing power.聽
The monied interests are doing what they do best 鈥� making money. The rest of us need to do what we can do best 鈥� use our voices, our vigor, and our votes.聽
