Hightower Lowdown

There'll be a crush of cameras at the front door of the White House on January 20 as scores of media outlets scramble to record the moment that the new president walks in. But, wait--who're those people who'll be sliding in quietly behind him? They're the ones who'll spend the next four years whispering in the president's ear, sitting in strategy sessions, running presidential councils, filling agency slots, and pulling the levers of executive power. They'll make up "The Administration," and they'll affect everything from economic policies to war, so it's worth getting a sense of them in advance of the election.

For a clue as to what kinds of people either McCain or Obama would carry into office, look at the top campaign advisors, fund raisers, and staffers already around them, for they're likely to move right along with their man. These people both reflect and shape a president's agenda, sometimes wielding the influence to alter both the overall direction and specific substance of a presidency.

Take the corporatization of Bill Clinton's administration. He had run a populist-minded campaign in 1992, pledging to challenge corporate greed and promising to be the president of working families. Come '93, however, such corporate hands as Robert Rubin were awarded strategic positions. A prince of Wall Street who'd been one the campaign's top fund raisers, Rubin was ensconced as head of Clinton's economic council--and he served there as corporate America's inside hit man, responsible for taking populist proposals down into a dark basement and throttling them.

In his first State of the Union speech, for example, Clinton proposed that tax write-offs for a corporate CEO's bloated paycheck be limited to "only" the first million bucks. The very next night, CEOs of several major corporations swarmed Rubin at a Manhattan dinner, wailing about Clinton's "cheap populism." Rubin, who'd been a $26-million man at Goldman Sachs, definitely felt their pain, and he smoothed their ruffled feathers with these words: "That's not the real Bill Clinton."

Apparently not. With Rubin counseling that it wasn't good to make CEOs jittery, Clinton immediately dropped the idea. He never brought it up again.

"Tell me with whom you walk," goes the old adage, "and I'll tell you who you are." Who is walking with McCain and Obama? While it's fun to speculate about who might be the vice-president choices of this year's candidates (and you can join the fun on page 3), it's more instructive to rummage through the names on the campaign teams to see who might go inside with the winner. This month we'll give you a tour of Obama's brain trust, and in the August issue we'll look into the McCain campaign.

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Dallas Oilman H.L. Hunt was a billionaire in a time when such massive wealth was unusual, back in the 1950s and '60s. H.L. was also politically bonkers--so far out there on the right-right-right wing that he considered Dwight Eisenhower a commie. In 1960, Hunt published a novel called Alpaca, in which he set forth his utopian vision for the governance of America. In the happy plutocratic kingdom he envisioned, the richer you are, the more votes you get.

Alas, poor H.L. couldn't get any sane people to take him seriously back then. Yet over the years, his wealthatopian fantasy has steadily crept into our political reality, becoming incorporated in today's campaign-funding system. As we've seen in both congressional and presidential races, money doesn't merely talk, it shouts, and it's been drowning out the voice of the people on issue after issue. While wealthy donors make up only a fraction of one percent of the population, they have gained a bigger vote in national public policy than the electorate at large.

The system unabashedly teaches that money is the ballot that counts and big donors are the citizens who matter. This is why a majority of Americans have become disenchanted-- to disgusted with politics during the past few decades. It's also why there is growing support for publicly financed campaigns, which grassroots groups have pushed through in seven states, stretching from Maine to Arizona.

Which brings us to this year's presidential run. While the bulk of the media attention has been on such weighty matters as who's wearing or not wearing flag lapel pins, there's been little focus on the back rooms where the money is being raised. So, in this issue of the Lowdown, we take a peek, finding the predictable, the ironic, and the surprising. [ read more ]

FROM THE "LAND OF THE CLUELESS AND CONNIVING," meet a couple of gentlemen who insist that America's political funding system is working splendidly. They report that there's absolutely nothing going on between the money interests and our lawmakers in Washington that should trouble our fuzzy little minds.

First up is one Paul Miller, president of the American League of Lobbyists (bet you didn't know that lobbying is now such an industry in Washington that they've formed a lobby group for lobbyists!). He offers this insight:

"Our government is not corrupt, lobbyists are not bribing people, and members of Congress are not being bought for campaign contributions. I don't think we can say for certainty that the current system is broken."

Gosh, I wonder if he can say "TomDeLay JackAbramoff DukeCunningham" with certainty...or a straight face?

Next comes Ben Barr, who's from a pro-corporate Arizona think tank called the Goldwater Institute. In an interview last October on the PBS television show "NOW," he shared this wisdom:

NOW: Do you think money is a problem in politics under the traditional system?

Barr: No, I do not. Money is speech.

NOW: But, surely money can also distort speech....

Barr: That's the price of freedom.... Speech costs money.

Follow the bouncing logic: Speech costs money; money distorts speech; distorted speech is freedom. [ read more ]

Hey, come on, progressives— buck up! There's been too much doom and gloom—especially among inside-the-beltway progressives—about John Kerry's chances on Nov. 2. Maybe they inherited an extra dour gene, or maybe they're spending too much time listening to pollsters and pundits. Of course there's the occasional discouraging campaign news, but don't wallow in it, for there's also greatly encouraging news:

• Yes, I know that some polls have shown Bush running even with Kerry or ahead—but the pollsters are vastly undercounting anti-Bush votes.

• Yes, I know that Kerry's charisma quotient ranks somewhere between that of Al Gore and Michael Dukakis—but John's been perking up lately, showing a bit of populist passion, striking some solid blows, and winning all three debates.

• Yes, I know that the Bushites are creepy-scary thugs who've shown that they'll lie, cheat, and steal to win, but they've been doing such things so often that their color-coded bag of tricks has lost credibility with the general public—the curtain has been pulled back, and the wizard has been revealed to be just a spoiled, insecure, petulant little son of a Bush.

Prediction: I believe George W. is a one-term president, just like his daddy was. I don't say this glibly, nor is it wishful thinking. My prediction is based on what I've seen at the grassroots level all across the country. As many of you Lowdowners know, I've been traveling practically nonstop since mid-July, going to 50-some cities and towns as part of my "Show Bush the Door in '04" tour. Using my new book (Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush) as a focal point, I've been crisscrossing America, speaking with folks in salons and saloons, labor halls and cow barns, bookstores and art museums, churches and theaters, on country fairgrounds, in civic centers, on campuses, in parks, and even inside neon-lit dance halls.

I find that people are onto the Bushites—and why wouldn't they be? Bush Inc. has spent nearly four years downsizing the middle-class, offshoring our best jobs, ignoring the growing cries for health care, gutting worker rights, unleashing corporate polluters and plunderers, defunding public education programs, bashing gays and lesbians, sending hundreds of thousands of our loved ones into a deadly war of lies, empowering federal agents to stomp on our liberties, making wholesale arrests of peaceful dissenters...(gosh, so much to list, so little space).

Bush's policies are all big fat ugly hogs. The White House has tried to pretty them up with a coat of bright glossy lipstick—but who wants to kiss a hog? Even many of the people who voted for the "compassionate conservative" in 2000 have since found themselves up close and personal with the raw ugliness of the Bushite agenda, and they want no part of "Four More Years"— a partisan chant that most Americans now view as a direct threat.

It's no idle threat, either, for various Bushites have talked ominously of "the next" agenda, including a push to privatize Social Security, a war with Iran (while continuing to maintain our current troop levels in occupied Iraq, thus raising the stark possibility of a draft), a national sales tax that'll shift practically all federal taxation from the wealthy to the middle- class and poor people, an all-out drive for more NAFTAs, deep cuts in funding for education and other essential public needs, Patriot Act II, and much more federal debt piled on the backs of our children. ... [ read more ]