George Will and I have at least one thing in common. We don't hate people for being millionaires.
But after that, our similarities get murky.
Take the latest installment in Will's crusade to defeat attempts at campaign finance reform, for example. He argues that:
- Money is speech and ought not to be restricted
- The rationale for reform was to reduce corruption
- Self-financed candidates are by definition beyond corruption
- Rules to limit campaign spending are a gambit to protect incumbents (presumably against the pure millionaires who only want the best for their constituents and the country).
It's hard to tell from the evidence at hand whether Will's claim about incumbents keeping out rich candidates is correct, but from what I see, he must mean that rich incumbents are trying to keep out even richer ones.
Open Secrets lists the reported net worth of the top 25 members of the Senate in 2005, and the lowest ranking Senator is worth between $2.5 and $9.2 million. In the House, the number 25 spot is good for between $ 6.3 and $16.7 million.
This article from 2004 says one in three Senators is a millionaire and 123 House members, or better than one-fourth, "earned" one million in the previous year [which I take to mean they had that much in net worth].
Without going through all the financial disclosure reports myself, I'm going out on a limb and declaring that the proportion of millionaires in Congress is likely higher than in any other organization in the country, excepting perhaps certain investment banking firms. And it is certainly far out of whack with the nation as a whole.
In comparison, the criminal population in Congress is probably no worse than the rest of the country's.
The issue for me is neither wealth, nor free speech nor potential corruption — which Will says arises from quid pro quo arrangements connecting contributions with particular actions. It's how wealth connects a person to certain interests and detaches them from other concerns — and whether we want the nation run by a concentration of people whose experience is so remote from the average citizen's.
Is it reasonable to think that men who've made personal fortunes in energy, defense contracting or investment banking might have a wee favorable disposition toward those industries without benefit of direct bribery?
We don't need to fear the outright crooks in Congress or the Bush Administration, where wealthy folks are also well-represented. Anyone willing to take a bribe in exchange for influencing legislation is clearly a loser, with limited pull.
It's the further entrenchment of oligarchy we should seek to limit. And if George Will truly can't see that, then perhaps it's because he's spending too much time delivering his free speech apologetics to that very crowd.
Will, who reportedly took $12,500 for speaking engagements in 1994, is now, like lobster, priced off the menu.
