It's hard to imagine the nearly anonymous, presidential unhopeful Chris Dodd having raised more than twice the amount in campaign contributions from any given industry over a better-known and first-tier candidate, but this he has done.
To wit, from yesterday's NYT: John "McCain’s campaign filings show just $61,000 from the military industry in the first quarter -- less than half as much as the long-shot campaign of Democratic Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics."
Now why in the world, one might reasonably ask, would the military-industrial complex cold-shoulder a candidate who seems to want to fight everyone and for years to come? The answer, generally, lies in those evidentiary notches in the fetid system of bribery that we charitably call campaign finance, and, specifically, because Mr. McCain has been tooling around the country saying enormously obvious things like this:
"Defense contractors are more concerned with winning the next contract than performing on the current one."
As any consumer who has recently compared any corporation's sales and service departments knows all too well, McCain could have generically and quite properly substituted "American business" for "defense contractors." Nevertheless he fingered defense; and defense is pouting, taking its revenge, unleashing a passive-aggressive tantrum that makes others in the bribe-begging department stand up, take note and keep their mouths shut about the vast array of corporate ghouls who do profound harm to this nation.
So much for the commonplace. What made this particular article so interesting, however, was its evolutionary component of flagrant debasement: that is, even the grafters are going public -- going quotable -- about their charming racket.
Historically lobbyists and other major campaign contributors have limited themselves to public confessions of wanting "access." That's all, just access -- the opportunity to plead their case before government decision makers. It's unmitigated b.s., of course, but that's all they'd allow the public or press. Yet in this piece, on the record with the New York Times, a telecommunications lobbyist rather startlingly permitted her name -- Kim Bayliss -- to be attached to this matter-of-fact but customarily muted observation:
"[McCain] wants to be independent, to make decisions free from the influence of special interests -- God bless him. But those are the people with money, and they are only going to give their money because you have been with them or you are going to be with them."
As noted, the observation itself is scarcely shocking. What does startle, however, is that at least some bribers -- and many more to follow, no doubt -- are no longer taking the wimpy, good-citizen and goo-goo public relations approach to graft. They are going public, identifying themselves and telling voters point-blank that their job is that of buying politicians, lock, stock and congressional seat or Oval Office.
Like everything else in this increasingly vulgar culture, even in politics the phony veil of propriety is being lifted. It's anything goes and everything to the highest bidder and the grafters now feel free to be open about it. You'll take it and like it, they are saying, in effect, because you have no choice. Because they also own the means of change.