Is This Going To Be The Year Wealthy Executives Dominate The Political System Even More Than Usual?

It doesn't seem very remarkable that the American political elite is filled with multimillionaires and that they have a distinct tendency to represent the point of view of their own class. It should be remarkable-- I mean we're kinda/sorta a democracy with a system of universal education-- but it's not. The political elite did its best to make sure the public education system would shy away from the whole critical thinking thing and concentrate on turning out minimally educated worker drones/consumers who could partially read the fine print.

Last week Michael Luo and Damien Cave presented a little report in the NY Times on how even the wealthiest and most selfish among us can-- and do-- run as populist outsiders. And this isn't just an essay about Republicans or just about egregiously deceitful crooks like Darrell Issa, the richest man in the House, a crazy demagogue and teabagger, or the only California congressman to join Michele Bachmann's demented Tea Party Caucus, real estate swindler Gary Miller (with a net worth of at least $14 million at last count). Ostensibly, Jeff Greene is a billionaire and a Democrat... kinda/sorta.

When Jeff Greene, a k a the Meltdown Mogul, recently brought his Democratic campaign for the United States Senate to a poor Miami neighborhood rife with the kinds of subprime mortgages that he became a billionaire betting against, did he:

A) Arrive in a Cadillac Escalade S.U.V., before stumping for energy conservation;

B) Tell the crowd that he was “fed up and frustrated” with Washington while suggesting job-creation ideas previously proposed by Washington politicians;

C) Receive a raucous welcome as an outsider who could turn Florida around.
The answer? All of the above, of course.

Call it the Great Recession paradox. Even as voters express outrage at the insider culture of big bailouts and bonuses, their search for political saviors has led them to this: a growing crowd of über-rich candidates, comfortable in boardrooms and country clubs, spending a fortune to remake themselves into populist insurgents.

The number of self-financed candidates has crept up the last few election cycles, and this year seems to be on pace for another uptick.

Through just the second quarter of the year, at least 42 House and Senate candidates-- 7 Democrats and 35 Republicans-- in 23 states had already donated $500,000 or more of their own money to their campaigns, according to the most recent data available from the Center for Responsive Politics. That list does not even include governors’ races, and the roster promises to grow as the campaign season progresses and spending escalates.

...Having gobs of personal cash to toss into a race seems to be especially potent in California and Florida, with their expensive media markets. The governors’ races are a prime example. In California, Meg Whitman, a Republican and former chief executive of eBay, has swamped all other self-financed candidates across the country, using $90 million of her own money to trounce Steve Poizner, who contributed $24 million from his own pocket, in the Republican primary.

And in Florida, Rick Scott, the former head of Columbia/HCA Healthcare-- a large hospital chain that paid $1.7 billion in fines for fraudulently billing government programs like Medicare-- has become so visible on television that his latest ads start with him saying “Me again.” Mr. Scott has shocked the Republican establishment by becoming the clear front-runner after spending more than $20 million on advertisements.

Mr. Greene, though, is the biggest surprise so far. A Democrat who had been a Republican; a brash, gold-watch-and-Prada-sunglasses-wearing investor with friends like Mike Tyson and Heidi Fleiss, even he admits he has been surprised by how quickly his campaign has picked up support. He entered just before the filing deadline in April. Democratic officials laughed him off initially. But not anymore.

Recent polls show that Mr. Greene, 55, has pulled roughly even in the primary with Representative Kendrick B. Meek, the Miami Democrat who had been the party favorite, though Gov. Charlie Crist still leads as an independent in a three-way general election.

Mr. Greene’s campaign finance report filed last week starkly illustrates the impact of his wealth. He took in just $3,036 in outside contributions, while lending himself-- and spending-- $5.9 million in the second quarter, not far off from what Mr. Meek has raised in 18 months.

Mr. Greene insists that for self-financed candidates, now is the moment. “If 2008 was the year of change, 2010 is the year of frustration,” he said in an interview.

His approach, like that of many other rich candidates, is simple: tap into voter anger (“I’m fed up,” Mr. Greene tells crowds) then argue that only those who have succeeded in business can drive economic recovery, without kowtowing to special interests.

Multimillionaire crooked businessmen and women from Linda McMahon in Connecticut to Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman in California are counting on the same thing-- suckering voters justifiably angry at professional politicians that autocratic and pampered business executives aren't as bad. Even though they're worse-- much, much, much worse. Fernando Espuelas grappled with the notion at HuffPo last week in a look at the California governor's race which pits billionaire Meg Whitman against career-long politician Jerry Brown. "Questions about Whitman," he writes, "persist. Beyond her Goldman Sachs connection (strangely under played by the Brown campaign), allegations that she was physically abusive to an E-Bay employee, and serious doubts about her real position on immigration (a keystone issue for the king or queen-making Latino electorate)-- there is the CEO question."

Whitman has told the electorate that she is the person to fix California. And boy, does California need fixing. The litany of problems sounds like a Biblical list of divine plagues and punishments-- the yawning budget deficit, the uber-powerful public employee unions and the equally influential business special interest that run through Sacramento like ants at a picnic, the massively under-invested state infrastructure, and, of course, an education system that has deteriorated to the point where only 50% of the students actually graduate from the state's largest public school district (Los Angeles).

To these and many other problems, Whitman has prescribed a simple solution: run the state government like a good business. Cut costs, invest in opportunities, fix the state like you would restructure an ailing corporation.

And who better than a successful, big company CEO to do it?

But as Jerry Brown is fond of pointing out, a state government is not at all like a corporation.

The CEO of a company is a kind of beneficent dictator. She wakes up in the morning with an idea (build a product, acquire a company, restructure the business) and faster than you can say "Let's get it done!" well trained executives are implementing actions.

Vision becomes mission through the exercise of executive power.

But California, and specifically the institutional power of the Governor of the state, are far from that corporate construct.

The division of powers, not just between the executive, legislative, and judicial, but also among the competing elected state-wide officers (the state comptroller, the treasurer, the insurance commissioner, et al), plus the muti-layered municipal and county centers of power, combine to make the governing of California an exercise in constant compromise if not outright frustration. (Just ask Arnold.)

...[C]an a common sense, business approach to governing the state actually work? Is the projection of vision into the marketplace (a talent clearly demonstrated by Whitman's success at E-Bay) analogous to actually governing a massive state, with colossal problems and a diffused power structure that has stymied governors for decades?

Of course, Jerry Brown, a former governor and perpetual fixture in state politics says no. In a recent interview with Time magazine, Brown blasted the notion that running a corporation would prepare one to run California:

He is quick to contrast himself with Whitman, pointing out every instance where her theories crumble against the realities of actually governing. "I've done this," he explains. "I've been in government and overseen thousands of businesses. I've run charter schools. Those are businesses. She ran her ... her website. She can say whatever she wants. But if you have never worked in government...It's a different world. That's like someone who's never dove in a river and says, I know what swimming in a river is like."

Of course, this is the crux of the election. Will Whitman's government-as-business approach trump Jerry Brown's deep experience in state governing? Will voters, sick and tired of the deeply corrupt California political scene, flee from Brown's experience because it may mean business as usual? Will they buy Whitman's technocratic proposals?

And in many of these cases it isn't just a professional politician vs a flashy businessman. Some of these business leaders have failed spectacularly-- like Carly Fiorina, a bad joke in the business world-- or have been convicted of criminal behavior, Rick Scott being only the worst of many, or are both corrupt wealthy businessmen and corrupt wealthy career politicians like Issa and Miller. And in the end, ill-educated-- purposely ill-educated-- voters decide. Are they also masochists? Jason Linkins put up an excellent HuffPo rundown of the big self-funders Friday-- a motley array of crooks and thieves eager to get their hands on the levers of power-- and focussed on sociopaths like Tim D'Annunzio (R-NC), Steve Poizner (R-CA) and Terrence Wall (R-WI) who have already been eliminated by the voters. We'll find out in November how many more creepy business types trying to buy political seats will be rejected-- and, meanwhile, I get to play my favorite video of the year, one voters in the U.K. seem to have ignored: