By Robert
Reich
Americans are sick of politics. Only 13 percent approve of
the job Congress is doing, a near record low. The President’s approval ratings
are also in the basement.
A large portion of the public doesn’t even bother voting.
Only 57.5 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots in the 2012
presidential election.
Put simply, most Americans feel powerless, and assume the
political game is fixed. So why bother?
A new study scheduled to be published in this fall by
Princeton’s Martin Gilens and Northwestern University’s 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: “The preferences of the average American
appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant
impact upon public policy.”
Instead, lawmakers respond to the policy demands of wealthy
individuals and monied business interests – those with the most lobbying
prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.
Before you’re tempted to say “duh,” wait a moment. Gilens’
and Page’s data come from the period 1981 to 2002. This was before the Supreme
Court opened the floodgates to big money in “Citizens United,” prior to
SuperPACs, and before the Wall Street bailout.
So it’s 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
“Public Opinion” that the broad public didn’t know or care about public policy.
Its consent was “manufactured” by an elite that manipulated it. “It is no
longer possible … to believe in the original dogma of democracy,” 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 – clubs,
associations, political parties, unions – to which politicians were responsive.
“Interest-group pluralism,” as it was called, thereby
channeled the views of individual citizens, and made American democracy
function.
What’s 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 “countervailing
power.” These alternative power centers ensured that America’s vast middle and
working classes received a significant share of the gains from economic growth.
Starting in 1980, something profoundly changed. It wasn’t
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 – retailers, farm
cooperatives, and local and regional banks – 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 –
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’re sick
of politics, and many of us aren’t even voting.
But if we give up on politics, we’re 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.
The monied interests are doing what they do best – making
money. The rest of us need to do what we can do best – use our voices, our
vigor, and our votes.
ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor’s
Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and
Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, was Secretary of
Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten
most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written
thirteen books, including the best sellers “Aftershock" and “The Work of
Nations." His latest, "Beyond Outrage," is now out in paperback.
He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of
Common Cause. His new film, "Inequality for All," is now available on
Netflix, iTunes, DVD, and On Demand.
