【2010.6.9纽约时报】富人（如eBay的CEO)近来频频当选的后果

月抱琵琶

Op-Ed Columnist
Rise of the Richies
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: June 9, 2010
“Career politicians in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., be warned; you now face your worst nightmare!” said Meg Whitman, at her victory speech in California this week.


Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
Gail Collins


Whitman, as the world now knows, is the former chief executive of eBay who won the Republican gubernatorial nomination by spending $71 million of her own money. She has said that she is prepared to spend $150 million to win the general election and the right to run a semibankrupt state with an intransigent Legislature.

The people of California may be hoping that if she wins, she’ll just pay off their deficit. As a resident of New York City, which has had a billionaire chief executive for some time, I would like to say: Don’t hold your breath.

Meanwhile, Carly Fiorina, a fellow former C.E.O., snagged the party’s Senate nomination by spending several million dollars of her fortune on last-minute ads. She was running against a well-thought-of former elected official who wasn’t particularly wealthy and was crushed, crushed, crushed. (Whitman, on the other hand, was running against another richie, who simply made the mistake of thinking $25 million would be enough to seal the deal.)

As the crowd celebrated the dual victories, while Twittering mercilessly about Whitman’s cash bar, the gubernatorial nominee explained that the worst nightmare for status quo lawmakers was of “two businesswomen from the real world who know how to create jobs, balance budgets and get things done.”

This is not actually the case. For career politicians, the worst nightmare would be a businessperson from the real world with a billion dollars and an open checkbook. Freddy Krueger is Michael Bloomberg.

We have been entertaining ourselves with theories about how this election year is going to be all about voter anger. Or Washington insiders. Or health care. Or TARP. But, really, it’s going to be about money. Gobs of cash falling on campaigns like tar balls on a beach.

Besides the rich “self-funders,” we have loony attack ads from mysterious well-heeled groups with names like Friends of Puppies. (A recent ad in Alabama attacking a gubernatorial candidate for supporting the teaching of evolution was financed by the True Republican PAC, whose big donor was actually the state teachers’ union.)

The fear of a billion-dollar Freddy Krueger or Friends of Puppies terrifies normal elected officials into compulsively piling up campaign donations to protect them from a big-money tornado. Whenever we try to come up with a system that will even the playing field, the Supreme Court calls foul. Arizona has a clean elections law that rewards candidates who promise not to take money from special interests. Just this week, the court told Arizona that the state couldn’t distribute matching funds under the program because it might violate the First Amendment rights of one fringe candidate named Buz who refused to take part in the system.

Back in the days of the Good John McCain, Congress prohibited corporations from running ad campaigns during the election season that were aimed at influencing a race. (He was so good, the Good John McCain. Always wandering around New Hampshire talking about campaign finance reform. The only person who ever made it interesting. Whatever happened to him?)

In January, the Roberts court, in a burst of creative overreaching, ruled 5 to 4 that corporations have the same free speech rights as people and knocked out Good John McCain’s law. Right now, people in Congress are trying to find a fix for that one. They’re focusing on transparency, which is something people always claim to like.

“If you want to run a nasty negative ad, the public should have the right to know who you really are,” said Chuck Schumer, the Senate sponsor of the painfully named Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act. Under the bill, a theoretical ad would not only say it was paid for by Friends of Puppies but also that the top Friends of Puppies donors were BP, Goldman Sachs, A.I.G., Halliburton and Blackwater.

The bill is scheduled to go to the floor of the House soon, but it has gotten heavy artillery from the Republican leadership, as well as groups of all stripes that don’t want to reveal their big donors.

“When someone like Schumer wants to know who’s paying for an ad — let’s be honest. They’re taking names,” said R. Bruce Josten of the United States Chamber of Commerce.

Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, one of the House sponsors, expects the bill to pass his chamber with at least scattered Republican support. But the Senate is another matter. Schumer says some Republicans have expressed sympathy for the idea, but no one has volunteered to come on board. “All we need is one or two,” he said.

None of the John McCains have been heard from on this one. Maybe they’re in Arizona, communing with Buz.


http://www.strongwind.com.hk/article.aspx?id=14682