By Robert
Reich
If Donald Trump continues to implode, Hillary Clinton will win
simply by being the presidential candidate who isn’t Trump.
But the prospect of a President Trump is so terrifying that
Hillary shouldn’t take any chances.
The latest match-up polls show her about 6 points ahead – a comfortable but not sure-fire
margin.
What else can she offer other than that she’s also experienced
and would be the first woman to hold the job?
So far, she’s put forth a bunch of respectable policy ideas. But
they’re small relative to the economic problems most Americans face and to
Americans’ overwhelming sense the nation is off track.
She needs a big idea that gives her candidacy a purpose and rationale
– and, if she’s elected president, a mandate to get something hugely important
done.
What could that big idea be? I can think of several big economic
proposals. The problem is they couldn’t get through Congress – even if, as now
seems possible, Democrats retake the Senate.
Nor, for that matter, could Hillary’s smaller ideas get through.
Which suggests a really big idea – an idea that’s the
prerequisite for every other one, an idea that directly addresses what’s
disturbing so many Americans today – an idea that, if she truly commits herself
to it, would even reassure voters about Hillary Clinton herself.
The big idea I’m talking about is democracy.
Everyone knows our democracy is drowning under big money. Confidence in politics has plummeted, and big money as the major culprit.
In 1964, just 29 percent of voters believed government was “run
by a few big interests looking out for themselves,” according to the American
National Election Studies survey. In the most recent survey, almost 80 percent of Americans think so.
And because the free market depends on laws and rules, big
money’s political influence has rigged the economic system in favor of those at
the top.
Which has fueled this year’s anti-establishment rebellions –
propelling Bernie Sanders’s “political revolution” that won him 22 states, and
contributing to Donald (“I don’t need anybody’s money”) Trump’s authoritarian
appeal.
A study published in the fall of 2014 by Princeton
professor Martin Gilens and Professor Benjamin Page of Northwestern shows that
big money has almost entirely disenfranchised Americans.
Gilens and Page took a
close look at 1,799 policy issues, determining the relative influence on them
of economic elites, business groups, and average citizens.
Their conclusion: “The preferences of average Americans appear
to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon
public policy.” Instead, lawmakers respond to the policy demands of wealthy
individuals and big business.
The super wealthy account for a growing share of both parties’
funds. In the presidential election year 1980, the richest 0.01 percent gave 10 percent of total campaign contributions. In
2012, the richest 0.01 percent accounted for an astounding 40 percent.
Adding to the cynicism is the revolving door. In the 1970s only
about 3 percent of retiring members of Congress went on to become
lobbyists. In recent years half of all retiring senators and 42 percent of retiring representatives have done
so.
This isn’t because recent retirees have fewer qualms about
making money off their government contacts. It’s because so much money has
inundated Washington that the financial rewards of lobbying have become huge.
Meanwhile, the revolving door between Wall Street, on the one
side, and the White House and Treasury, on the other, is swiveling faster than
ever.
Clinton should focus her campaign on reversing all of this. For
a start, she should commit to nominating Supreme Court justices who will strike
down “Citizen’s United,” the 2010 Supreme Court case that opened the
big-money floodgates far wider.
She should also fight for public financing of general elections
for president and for congress – with government matching small-donor
contributions made to any candidate who agrees to abide by overall spending
limits on large-donor contributions.
She should demand full disclosure of all sources of campaign
funding, regardless of whether those funds are passed through non-profit
organizations or through corporate entities or both.
And she should slow the revolving door – committing to a strict
two-year interval between high-level government service and lobbying or
corporate jobs, and a similarly interval between serving as a top executive or
director of a major Wall Street bank and serving at a top level position in the
executive branch.
Will Hillary Clinton make restoring democracy her big idea? When
she announced her candidacy she said “the deck is stacked in favor of those at
the top” and that she wants to be the “champion” of “everyday Americans.”
The best way to ensure everyday Americans get a fair deal is to
make our democracy work again.
ROBERT B. REICH is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at
the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center
for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton
administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective
cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books,
including the best sellers “Aftershock, “The Work of Nations,"
and"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "Saving
Capitalism." He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect
magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, INEQUALITY FOR
ALL.
