With the Money …

Candidates in Mexico go about like headless chickens. Those in the United States go about with a desire to cut off Obama’s head. Mexico’s electoral “closed season” is a democratic aberration. In the United States, in another aberration, new rules have made the electoral process dependent on stockpiling money from millionaires. Funds raised are more important than votes. The goal of Republicans seeking the nomination in the primaries is to find a candidate capable of defeating Obama, as Cocoa Calderón would say, with piles of cash. President Obama, for his part, is spending all kinds of resources to remain in power.

Contrast the frenzy of the U.S. electoral season with Mexico’s reserve and modesty. In that country, contributions from individuals or groups were limited to $5,000 per campaign in every election cycle. This was one of the very strict rules laid down to prevent money from corrupting the electoral process after the Watergate experience.

The intention was to prevent contributions from turning into bribes. Because the imposition of this rule is the greatest incentive to violate it, groups of donors pretended not to send money directly to a particular campaign, but used various means sheltered in freedom of expression. So, for example, Republicans spent millions to destroy John Kerry, who ran against George W. Bush. They succeeded.

The Supreme Court, in a 2010 ruling in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, has permitted corporations and unions to spend indiscriminately on campaigns. This decision modified an earlier one from 2003 (McConnell vs. Federal Election Commission), which upheld restrictions on campaign expenditures from corporations and unions. The new rules have allowed the primary elections for the Republican Party and the Obama campaign to be backed by millions of dollars from political groups — not by the campaign committees nor specific candidates — known as “super PACs” (Political Action Committees).

These committees are theoretically apolitical organizations interested in specific issues that are unconnected to political parties. With a basis in the right to free speech, they may raise funds in an unlimited manner and may spend them politically however they please.

The U.S. electoral regulatory agency, known as the Federal Election Commission, has been and will be unable to do anything to avoid a new electoral phase in which there are no limits on electoral expenditures.

The nation’s richest and most famous have begun making contributions to their preferred candidates. Obama himself has benefited from the judicial ruling. Jeffrey Katzenberg, a well-known producer of Oscar-nominated and -winning animated Hollywood films (“Kung Fu Panda,” “Madagascar”), gave $2 million to the president.

The super PACs have come to be considered “arms of the campaigns,” and some think they are much more important than the campaign committees themselves.

In this marketplace of millions, the same president who had been systematically opposed to the new rules on indiscriminate spending has stopped discouraging external expenditures made on his behalf. He has asked members of his cabinet to become fundraisers for his own super PAC.

It remains to be seen if the money raised by Republicans is capable of defeating the money raised by Obama. The 2012 elections in the U.S. will make clear whether the richest have the ability to buy anything, including, in this case, the elections. As the old proverb would say in translation: “With the money, the dog dances.”*

* Translator’s note: Here the author employs the Spanish proverb “Con dinero baila el perro,” which is idiomatically similar to “Money makes the world go round” or “He who pays the piper calls the tune.”