American Shana Pearlman, author of The Palin Effect: Money, Sex and Class in the New American Politics, is bemused at the British outrage over the cash for access scandal. Politicians have got to raise funds somehow...
Earlier this month, when David Cameron went to visit President Barack Obama, the White House threw their British guests a state dinner. In attendance at that state dinner, the largest ever, were more than three dozen Obama “bundlers,” or high-profile fundraisers who not only make big donations to the President, but also collect donations from their friends and family. The bundlers who attended the Cameron state dinner had raised, up to that point, eight million dollars for the President’s re-election campaign.
Knowing this, it was pretty funny that David Cameron came home to such a kerfuffle over having private dinners with Tory donors. High-minded people got the vapors imagining that Tory donors were getting access to the Prime Minister for £250K. This kind of cash-for-access deal, which caused inhabitants of the salons of Islington to swoon with outrageous outrage, is more or less standard procedure in the United States and one which the current incumbent of the Oval Office uses to great effect.
Last September the President attended a fundraising dinner in Silicon Valley, at the home of Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer. The 70 guests paid $38,500 each to attend, including Lady Gaga, who wanted to use her time with the President to speak with him about bullying in schools. A laudable cause, to be sure, but at over 38 large why shouldn’t the pop star get what she paid for, which is access to the most powerful man in the world? But it isn’t just Lady Gaga and various Silicon Valley execs who get to pay for the President’s ear. Despite criticizing Super PACs, more than half of Obama’s most generous donors, including a number of donors to his own Super PAC, got to visit the White House and meet with policy officials numerous times. Record executive David Geffen even got to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom. The President has also continued the exciting practice, pioneered during the Bush years, of “revolving door” campaign contributions; former White House staffers, who leave government service and get high-paying jobs peddling access to the President and top policy makers, cut massive checks to their former boss, ensuring that the lines of access stay open. Former budget director Peter Orszag and former FCC official Kathy Brown are examples of this kind of thing. And it’s certainly true that once these people donate these enormous sums of cash, they expect something for their investment. Ronald Perelman, for example, a major Democratic donor, found himself in the enviable position of getting a no-bid government contract for his biotech company, Siga, to develop a smallpox vaccine to the tune of $443 million. Hollywood execs, who supported SOPA and PIPA, the online piracy laws that caused such controversy at the beginning of the year, were angry that Mr Obama didn’t come out in favour of the bills; after all, as one pointed out, “God knows how much money we’ve given to Obama and the Democrats and they’re not supporting our interests.” Getting access to President Obama and expecting to have an effect on policy in exchange for cash is incredibly common currency in modern politics.
But Mr Obama is certainly not a trendsetter in this regard. President George W. Bush certainly invited dozens of his top fundraisers to state dinners, and, like President Obama, had donors stay over at the White House and at presidential retreat Camp David. In fact, Bush released his White House guest list in 2009 because of a prior fundraising scandal during the Clinton era, in which Clinton traded access to the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House for pricey campaign donations. President Bush raised more than 1.8 million dollars from lobbyists during his first presidential campaign, including such exciting folks as convicted felon Jack Abramoff, who’s recently been released from a stint in the pokey for offenses like bribery and tax evasion.
But why is it notable – and hilarious – that so many right-thinking people are attending their fainting couches over who Mr Cameron invited round for dinner? The first is that President Obama has criticized Washington’s pay-for-access culture, but now that he realizes he has to bankroll a presidential campaign, well, suddenly it’s all hunky-dory. The Obama campaign raised 42 million dollars in the last three months of 2011 and you don’t raise a sum the size of the GDP of Bulgaria without promising your donors a little something-something. Secondly, the same people who are currently feverishly tweeting the #CamDineWithMe hashtag are generally the same people who think President Obama is just seven shades of awesome. The 2008 Obama campaign perpetrated the idea that they steamrolled to victory on the back of small donations from ordinary Americans; that turned out to be rather inaccurate. They raised money in 2008 the same way they’re doing it in 2012; by grinding out Presidential grip-and-grin parties with rich people. But that’s how you win American elections. Charismatic, handsome, adorable candidates like President Obama don’t just appear from on high to enlighten the American electorate; you’ve got to pay for ad campaigns, bus tours, get-out-the-vote efforts, field staff, phone banks, direct mail, social media campaigns, staffers, clothes, transportation, food, signs, buttons, t-shirts, venue hire, oh, and did I mention ad campaigns in expensive media markets like Florida, Virginia, and southern New Jersey? Last election both candidates raised one billion dollars; this time President Obama has set himself the goal of raising a billion dollars himself (whether or not he’ll reach it is up for debate). Presidential candidates have got to get their hands on the cash somehow, and selling access turns out to be exceedingly lucrative.
Britain is not America and money hasn’t infected politics in quite the same way here as it has across the pond, but thinking about pay-for-play on a global scale is a useful intellectual exercise. If you love exciting, sexy, talented American politicians like Presidents Obama and Clinton, I think you have to be honest with yourself – how come cash for access is bad when Cameron (or former President Bush) does it but good when Obama and Clinton do? Isn’t this the message of the worldwide Occupy movement – that there’s a global lack of voice for the poor and working class? Shouldn’t we, as responsible citizens of the world, be attempting to level the playing field so the most needy among us get the good effects of public policy, rather than some rich person’s pet cause? Shouldn’t the Cameron fundraising scandal not be a time for partisan point-scoring, but rather a rethink of how we can get politicians to listen to real problems that real people are having?