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Follow the Money: The 2008 US presidential campaign
By Lucia Green-Weiskel
Lucia is a
freelance writer and a MSc Asian Politics candidate at the School of
Oriental and African Studies, London. She has also published in The Nation, Red
Pepper and the SOAS Spirit.
There are few things certain about the still-distant
2008 US presidential elections. One such certainty is
that it will reveal a lot about the relation between
corporate money and American politicians. The two
Democrat front runners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama,
come at the issue from very different perspectives.
First, Senator Clinton. It is only a few months into
the Primaries and already records have been broken:
Hillary Clinton will spend more money than any
Democratic candidate in history – some predict over $1
billion by the time the race is through. This has led
many voters to question the authenticity of her claim
that her bid for the presidency marks the opening of a
dialogue she will have with American voters. Many
believe if she plans to woo the wealth of America’s vast
corporate resources, she will have to open a dialogue
with her sponsors first.
The Clintons are renowned for their financial slickness.
They have a unique ability to reach their fingers into
the deep pockets of corporate America and come up with
wads of cash, cash that they depended on to get them
through the series of conservative bludgeonings aimed at
them in the 1990s, the last of which is now humorously
enshrined as “Monica Gate” or, more crudely, “Whitewater
Gate.” This time Senator Clinton is coupling big money
with savvy Washington-insider advisors such as the
former head of the Democratic National Committee Terry
McAuliffe, former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin, and of
course one of the best political strategists in
Washington: her husband.
The financing of an American presidential campaign can
be run in one of two ways: the candidate can accept a
cap on campaign spending and the federal government will
match what funds are raised. Alternatively, a candidate
can opt out of receiving federal funding altogether and
in this way avoid any limit on spending. Increasingly
candidates have opted for the second format so they are
not constrained by regulation.
But this latter option has landed Clinton in a heap of
trouble. She has money of all kinds flowing in her
direction: money bloated with political aims. She is the
second largest recipient of fund from the pro-Israel
lobby. To no-one’s surprise she is warmly invited to
speak in fora like AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, the foremost voice of ‘the Israel lobby’),
where she fiercely condemned Iran’s anti-Israel rhetoric
and committed herself and her future administration to
keeping all options on the table when it comes to a
military strike with Iran.
Clinton
maintains close ties with the Democratic Leadership
Council (DLC), the pro-business, pro-free trade
think-tank funded by several of the largest US
corporations, including Philip Morris, Texaco and Enron,
as well as right-wing funds like the Bradley Foundation.
The nearest thing to a statement of intent for the
progressive wing of the Democratic Party are was made in
Democratic Senator Jim Webb's response to George Bush’s
most recent State of the Union address: restoring
America's integrity abroad and reducing corporate
infiltration of the American political process. Hillary
Clinton's record runs in direct opposition to these
goals.
Enter Barack Obama. He stunned the crowd one hot summer
night in Boston, Massachusetts when he took the stage at
the 2004 Democratic Convention. A man who comes from
Kansas as much as he comes from Kenya, and whose whole
life has been a blending of opposites, spoke of unity.
He reminded us that there are Americans who “worship an
awesome god in blue states” and “gay friends in red
states”. He resurrected for the average American couple
watching at home on the TV set the core principles of
the Democratic Party: job security, a living wage,
diversity and tolerance, affordable healthcare,
internationalism with integrity, support for the armed
services and an end to an expensive and unjust war. He
said the Democratic Party represents hope, the hope
heard in freedom song sung by slaves, in anti-war
demonstrators, and by “a skinny kid, with a funny name
who believes that America has a place for him too.”
Politics is “gummed up” by money, he said, and so far he
has put his money where his mouth is.
Obama claims that his campaign doesn’t accept money from
federally-registered corporate lobbyists or Political
Action Committees (PACs). “What
we are doing is organising ordinary people to do
extraordinary things all across the country. And that's
what it's going to require in order to change politics
in this country,” he said in a recent debate.
But running a campaign on dollar donations against the
super woman of corporate contributions won’t be easy.
Obama’s message is clear: he believes he can match
Clinton’s campaign, if not surpass it. In the first
quarter of this year Obama received contributions from
twice as many people as did the Clinton campaign. $6.9
million came from 50,000 donors online. 90pc of that
money came in the form of small contributions: $100
donations or less. Is this what Obama-mania looks like
in hard currency? If so, he may be poised well against
his opponent. However, the race is just started and the
rough terrain is still ahead. For Obama, like any
candidate, the real spending will be in the defence part
of his race, and not the initial offense.
Is
grassroots campaigning still possible in America? Or is
corporate money so deeply embedded in the political
process that it is here to stay? The 2008 presidential
race will be a money race more than anything else and at
the end of it some of these questions may be answered. |
