Money and Politics
For all the claims of populism, American politics are really oligarchic. The scale of wealth for the small group who finance our politics is gargantuan, with few counterweights. But we can push back.
By Jeremi Suri
“Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat nowadays.”
Will Rogers, 1931
We are living in a time when each week has a year’s worth of moments that shake us out of our skin – from a former president’s 34-count felony conviction and a current president’s mental freeze in a debate to an assassination attempt and a creepy 92-minute “unity” speech that felt like a horror film. With all this Sturm und Drang, it is hard to keep a close eye on the main throughlines in our democracy. One of those throughlines is money: who is paying for power and influence?
If you looked beyond the headlines, the influence-peddlers appeared on center stage last week. Elon Musk endorsed Donald Trump with a flourish of short posts on X. David Sacks, a venture capitalist (and former Stanford classmate of mine), gave a rousing speech at the Republican National Convention for the ticket. And J.D. Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, brought a large group of Silicon Valley billionaires into the Trump team. Together, these very rich men will contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to Republicans.
On the other side, the rich Democratic donors in Hollywood and on Wall Street are among the loudest voices calling for President Joe Biden to step away from his reelection campaign and allow a different nominee. Actor George Clooney penned a powerful piece in the New York Times that announced where these big Democratic donors stood. In subsequent days, they froze their contributions to the party which forced Biden, at last, to reconsider his initial stubbornness and denial. Everyone knows that Democratic politicians and most of their voters will rally around the party’s nominee, no matter who it is. The real question is who will be able to raise hundreds of millions from the big donors to get the vote out and help reach the few undecided citizens living in a handful of swing states.
Small money donations from ordinary citizens, like you and me, generate millions, but the big money still matters most for both parties. Channeled through Political Action Committees (PACs), that money is relied upon for the most expensive items – a party convention, advertising, hiring temporary workers, and paying fancy staff. Between January 2023 and April 2024 alone, before the intense campaign season began, the two parties raised $8.6 billion, 65% of which went through PACs, dominated by the wealthiest donors.
Trump and MAGA offer tax cuts, Biden and Democrats offer influence
For all the claims about populism, American politics are really oligarchic. The people who serve in the highest offices, make the most important decisions, and benefit most from them are connected to the concentrations of wealth in the country. This is true for universities as well, dominated by the same donors in many cases. Although oligarchy has always been integral to American politics – think of the rural gentry who wrote the Constitution and the business titans of the Gilded Age – the scale of wealth for a small group of current billionaires is so gargantuan that there are few counterweights. Trump is offering all of them massive tax cuts that will tank the economy for everyone else. Biden and the Democrats are promising them more influence in a global knowledge economy that continues to leave less privileged citizens behind.
What I describe is obvious and widely-recognized. It explains our current crisis. Most citizens distrust elected officials (and CEOs, Supreme Court judges, and university presidents) because they believe that they are on the payroll of the rich, and that is largely true. We are polarized because citizens support the untrustworthy elected officials who convincingly hate the people they hate most. So, if you hate international-minded educated elites, then you back Trump and the Republicans as their slayers. If you hate oil, technology, and landed billionaires, then you back Democrats. This is negative partisanship driven by inequality, distrust, and money politics.
The solution is obvious: prevent unlimited money in politics. The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that money is speech, so it should be free. The Court has, however, allowed some limits (currently, a citizen cannot contribute more than $3,300 directly to any candidate), but PACs and other organizations (including religious organizations) collect unlimited contributions to support candidates. That is how the wealthy wield their influence. Most of the PACs do not report their donations or their day-to-day operations. The Republican project to control the civil service, Project 2025, emerged from the Heritage Foundation and secretive PAC funding.
An opportunity to ask big questions
What should we do? Where is the hope in this account of rich guys manipulating American politics? The answer is obvious: regulating money in politics must be a top agenda item for all citizens. We can start small, with laws forcing PACs to reveal their donors and activities in detail. We can limit how money is used and raised, setting periods between elections when fund-raising is not allowed, for example. And we can consider caps on how much campaigns can spend – similar to salary caps in professional sports. If spending is not unlimited, then fund-raising is no longer all-encompassing, as it is for every politician I know today. It seems reasonable to say, for example, that a presidential campaign should not spend more than $1 billion in a single cycle! Aren’t there better uses for money and the candidate’s attention? Most other advanced democracies have similar limits on campaign spending.
Our current crisis is an opportunity to ask big questions. None of the current candidates will challenge a fund-raising system that benefits them, but there are plenty of future candidates who would thrive in a system with less dominance by a few rich guys. We can begin to push for that in our local communities, cultivating new candidates who will change the system from within as they rise up to national politics. And we need a movement of engaged citizens, journalists, and scholars who continue to follow the money, despite all the other things distracting our attention.
A functioning democracy requires leaders who really serve those without wealth and other privileges. That is not about being woke; it is essential for a system of representation. We must all support candidates who care about us, not someone else’s money.
*In his 40 years at the New Yorker, renowned cartoonist Lee Lorenz produced more than 1,800 cartoons.
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Jeremi Suri holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a professor in the University's Department of History and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Professor Suri is the author and editor of eleven books on politics and foreign policy, most recently: Civil War By Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy. His other books include: The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office; Liberty’s Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama; Henry Kissinger and the American Century; and Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente. His writings appear in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN.com, Atlantic, Newsweek, Time, Wired, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and other media. Professor Suri is a popular public lecturer and comments frequently on radio and television news. His writing and teaching have received numerous prizes, including the President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Texas and the Pro Bene Meritis Award for Contributions to the Liberal Arts. Professor Suri hosts a weekly podcast, “This is Democracy.”
I'm reminded of another Will Rogers quote: "I don't belong to an organized political party, I'm a Democrat." That's never more true than today!