The United States is definitely backsliding in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI). With 100 being the best possible score (based on trust that experts and business leaders place on governmental institutions), the recently released (January 25th) 2021 CPI scores place the United States 27th – behind Bhutan, Uruguay, the United Arab Emirates and Chile – with a nasty 67 score, the lowest it has ever been. The stated reason: "The country's lack of progress on the CPI can be explained by the persistent attacks against free and fair elections, culminating in a violent assault on the US Capitol, and an increasingly opaque campaign finance system."
If Transparency International’s report is not enough for you, try “What Happens When Democracies Become Perniciously Polarized?,” a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report written by Jennifer McCoy of Georgia State and Benjamin Press of the Carnegie Endowment: “The United States is quite alone among the ranks of perniciously polarized democracies in terms of its wealth and democratic experience. Of the episodes since 1950 where democracies polarized, all of those aside from the United States involved less wealthy, less longstanding democracies, many of which had democratized quite recently. None of the wealthy, consolidated democracies of East Asia, Oceania or Western Europe, for example, have faced similar levels of polarization for such an extended period.”
As tracked in the by NY Times columnist Thomas Edsall (January 26th edition): “McCoy and Press studied 52 countries ‘where democracies reached pernicious levels of polarization.’ Of those, ‘twenty-six — fully half of the cases — experienced a downgrading of their democratic rating.’ Quite strikingly, the two continue, ‘the United States is the only advanced Western democracy to have faced such intense polarization for such an extended period. The United States is in uncharted and very dangerous territory.’”
Instead of trying to limit the influence of money and narrow the time period during which campaigns can be funded and mounted, the United States is going precisely in the opposite direction. What’s more, virtually all of the post-November election state laws dealing with voting rights have operated to reduce the number of bona fide US citizens from voting, applied gerrymandering to limit the impact of voters who oppose the incumbents and, in some cases, created mechanisms for states to ignore and then reverse the results of an actual vote. Money is now too much of a decider as to who gets to run. Rich corporations, individuals and SuperPacs are becoming the determinants of who gets to the voters. What is criminal corruption in other nations is legal in the United States.
Since the 2010 Supreme Court’s malignant ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission – holding that organizations were “individuals” within the meaning of the Constitution whose self-directed political campaign contributions could not be capped – the adage that money follows candidates was reversed: where vast pools of money were directed at special interests or minority cultural values, early-stage candidates reshaped their political advocacy to access that highly-biased capital.
Where contributions used to wait for signs of a candidate rising above the clutter before stepping in, well-funded issue campaigns effectively decide who those rising candidates would be. Flies descend on the honey. The further-to-the-right Supreme Court is already making noises about removing even more campaign contribution restrictions. The result is a whole lot of extremist candidates who would not have had a shot of winning elections in bygone eras. But they get through the primaries by out-pandering to those special interests better than their opponents.
For example, despite having taken an oath to support the United States Constitution, there are Republican Members of Congress – from Senators Ted Cruz (TX), John N Kennedy (LA) and Josh Hawley (MO) as well as Representatives Madison Crawthorn (NC), Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), Matt Goetz (FL), Paul Gosar (AZ), to name a few – who have serially supported the January 6th insurrectionists as peaceful protestors, some have even gone so far as to suggest that political violence to reverse election results and secession are justified… flagrant violations of that oath.
And trust me, it’s not just rich Republicans playing the “money is power” game. Just owning lots of stock should be an issue for all elected officials. Jennifer Haberkorn, writing for the January 21st Los Angeles Times: “Recent allegations of lawmakers potentially benefiting from personal stock market trades has propelled new interest in reining in their ability to trade or own individual stocks while in office.
“Dozens of lawmakers have come out in support of competing but similar bills that would limit their ability to hold or trade stocks while in office, perhaps requiring them to put any stocks into a blind trust before being sworn in… The issue has drawn a range of support and opposition, but not along the usual party divide. Most of the support has been driven by lawmakers, Democratic and Republican, who were elected in the last five years, with longer-tenured lawmakers generally noncommittal or less supportive.
“After previously pushing back on the proposals, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) opened the door to the idea of new prohibitions on Thursday… ‘If members want to do that, I’m OK with that,’ she said. But she rejected the idea that a ban is needed because lawmakers cannot be trusted to act ethically. ‘I just don’t buy into that,’ she said.
“Pelosi does not personally own or trade stocks, but her husband, Paul Pelosi, is a frequent trader and, according to recent disclosures required under existing law, owns millions of dollars in individual stocks, including in high-profile companies such as Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon…
“The legislative branch is not the only one under scrutiny. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said last month that the courts need to do a better job enforcing conflict-of-interest laws that are supposed to prevent judges from deciding cases affecting companies in which they hold stock. … Pelosi on Thursday [1/20] decried the lack of disclosure requirements at the Supreme Court and indicated that any new legislation covering lawmakers would include justices… ‘I don’t think the court should be let off the hook,’ she said. ‘When we go forward with anything, let’s take the Supreme Court with us to have disclosure.’”
But as Kedric Payne, senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center and former deputy chief counsel at the Office of Congressional Ethics has stated: “Disclosure is not enough.” Democracy is proving to be much more fragile than most of us had assumed. If we care about keeping this country intact, we are going to have to put aside extremist views and get back to a true, free and fair representative government. We are definitely not on that track anymore.
I’m Peter Dekom, and occasionally heels-dug-in Americans need to look up and realize what they are actually wishing for.
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