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“But then maybe you should write a book trying to convince America that money is not buying results,” the defender objects. “I mean, if Americans believed the earth was flat, that wouldn’t be a reason to ban airlines from flying across the horizon.”

You can write that book. If you think you have the data to prove that the existing system is benign—that it doesn’t distort democracy, that the idea that representatives would actually deliberate is silly, that this competing dependency is a good thing, or at least harmless—then make my day. Meanwhile, my view is that even if America’s judgment wouldn’t pass peer review in a political science journal, it’s pretty damn insightful. We should listen to it and do something about it rather than sitting around waiting for the political scientists to deliver their gold-standard proofs.

The problem is trust—or, is at the least trust. As Marc Hetherington put it, “part of the public’s antipathy toward government is born of concern that it is run for the benefit of special interests…. Measures that can change this perception should increase political trust.”148 We need to deploy those measures. But we can’t until we change what it is reasonable to believe—by removing the overwhelming dependency of members upon special-interest funding. As Dennis Thompson has written, “Citizens have a right to insist, as the price of trust in a democracy, that officials not give reason to doubt their trustworthiness.”149

“Officials” in this democracy have given us reason to doubt.

So let’s survey the field of battle again. I began this chapter by acknowledging two apparently conflicting Republican claims: On the one hand, Senator Coburn claiming that there were “thousands of instances… where appropriations are leveraged for fundraising dollars.” On the other, Chairman Smith claiming that “the money does not play much of a role in what goes on in terms of legislative voting patterns and legislative behavior.”

There can be no doubt that the chairman is wrong at least about “legislative behavior.” Members spend between 30 percent and 70 percent of their time feeding this addiction. The majority of the attention of Congress gets devoted to the questions that matter most to their pushers (e.g., bank “swipe fees”). These two facts alone demonstrate the extraordinarily important way in which the money affects legislative behavior. No one could say that this effect is benign.

The harder question is whether the money affects “legislative voting patterns.” Here, it is the testimony of another Republican, Senator Larry Pressler (R-S.D.; 1979–1997), that is most helpful. As he explained to me, whether or not the money matters in the very last moment in the life (or death) of a bill, there is no evidence that it does not matter in the million steps from the birth of a policy idea to the very last moments in the life (or death) of a bill. Instead, all the “evidence” here is to the contrary: People who live inside this system (e.g., former members) and people who study the life of this system (e.g., journalists such as Kaiser) all affirm that money is mattering here a very great deal. How could it not?

In the end, this debate is not really a disagreement among scholars. It is a fight pressed by those defending a status quo. In that fight, there is a Boris Yeltsin: an addict whose addiction is destroying his ability to do his job. That addict denies the addiction. But at some point the denial feels like the dialogue from any number of familiar works of fiction: “I can handle it.” “It isn’t affecting me or my work.” “I understand how it might affect others. But it doesn’t affect me.” “I’m above it.” “I can control it.”

Right.

The corruption denier is in denial. It is time for us to move on.

CHAPTER 11

How So Damn Much Money Defeats the Left

On November 4, 2008, America voted to change its government. With the highest voter turnout in forty years, sixty-nine million Americans elected the