Republic, Lost_ How Money Corrupts Congress--And a Plan to Stop It - Lawrence Lessig [40]
When an assassin’s bullet thrust him into the presidency, however, Johnson changed his game. In his first speech to Congress, he placed civil rights at the core of his new administration, and hence at the core of the values of the Democratic Party. The decision to do this was profoundly controversial. In a six-hour meeting before the speech, Johnson was advised strongly against making civil rights so central to his administration. As described by Randall Woods, Johnson was told, “Passage [of the Civil Rights Act]… looked pretty hopeless; the issue was as divisive as any… ; it would be suicide to wage and lose such a battle.” The safe bet was against the fight. Johnson replied, “Well, what the hell is the presidency for?”6 These were not the words of a triangulator from the U.S. Senate, but of a man who had grown tired of that game, and wanted to try something new.
When he decided to make civil rights central to his party’s platform, Johnson knew that he was forever changing the political dominance of the Democrats. His decision to pass the most important civil rights legislation in history was a guarantee that the Republicans would again become competitive. Yet his loyalty was more to truth, or justice, or his legacy—you pick—than to party politics. To that end, whichever it was, he was willing to sacrifice a Democratic majority of tomorrow in order to use the Democratic majority of today.7
I don’t mean to suggest that racism made Reagan possible. To the contrary: it was a wide range of focused and powerful ideas, first born in the idealism of politicians such as Goldwater and public intellectuals such as William F. Buckley, that made the new Republican Party compelling. I remember well the power of those ideas. I was a rabid Reaganite, and the youngest elected member of a delegation at the 1980 Republican Convention.
But there’s no doubt that this decision by Johnson strengthened the Republican Party by alienating a large number of not-yet-enlightened southern Democrats. That alienation encouraged a Republican return. And when Ronald Reagan rode a powerful set of ideals to power—none of them explicitly tied to race—he gave to all Republicans an idea that only dreamers in 1950 would have had: that their party could retake control of Congress. That it might once again become the majority party.
It was 1994 when this dream was finally realized. With the energy and passion of Newt Gingrich, with the ideals of a “Contract with America,” and with a frustration about a young, triangulating Democratic president, the Republicans swept Congress. For the first time since 1954, the Republicans had control of both houses.
The Gingrich election changed everything: By putting the control of Congress in play, it gave both Republicans and Democrats something to fight to the death about. Whereas a comfortable, even if not ideal (for the Republicans, at least) détente had reigned for the prior forty-something years, now each side could taste majority status—or, perhaps more important, minority status. Congress was up for grabs. And between 1995 and 2010, control of Congress changed hands as many times as it had in the forty-five years before.
It was at this moment that the modern Congress—call it the “Fund-raising Congress”—was born. The Republicans came to power raising an unheard of amount of money to defeat the Democrats. Republicans in 1994 received $618.42 million (up from $534.64 million in 1992) in contrast to Democrats’ $488.68 million (down from $498.45 million in 1992).8 In the four years between 1994 and 1998, Republican candidates and party committees raised over $1 billion.9 Never before had a party come anywhere close.
This fund-raising in turn changed what leadership in both parties would mean: if leaders had once been chosen on the basis of ideas, or seniority, or political ties, now, in both parties, leaders were chosen at least in part on their ability to raise campaign cash.