How corporations became people and what it means to America

'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Goes Political [#1,099]

By D. A. Mittell

The U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in the case generally abbreviated as Citizens United authorized what have been dubbed super-PACs. These are political action committees that may now, constitutionally, raise and spend unlimited political funds, provided they operate completely independently of the candidate they may wish to promote.

This year, Mitt Romney has a super-PAC, Newt Gingrich has one – without it his candidacy would not have gotten out of New Hampshire -- and Rick Santorum has one. Recognizing the real world in which he is trying to get re-elected, President Obama now says he will accept super-PACs' support. His revised position is an admission that the independence of such things is a fiction.

To summarize where another five-to-four Supreme Court decision leaves the nation: Federal law limits individuals to $2,500 per donor, per election to candidates or their political committees. To the Court this is constitutional, as are lower state-level limits, such as the lowest-in-the nation $500-per-annum maximum in Massachusetts. Federally-recognized political parties may take $30,800 from individuals, and may spend unlimited amounts for and against federal candidates. Now, super-PACs may get and spend unlimited amounts. To common sense, very garbled. But all constitutional, says the Court.

Where it leaves the nation is self-evidently too stupid for the real world and for Us, the nominally-sovereign People. It is best likened to “Don't ask, don't tell” – for 17 unhappy years the nation's policy toward gays in the military services -- until the military itself found the hypocrisy embedded in the policy to be beneath its call to honor. What the Court has given politics has every evil of the discarded policy, and already one that it didn't. In the long run Citizens United is bound to be as unstable as Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). But this year it defines the terms of the election.

Don't ask, don't tell, Charlie Baker vs. Tim Cahill

The evil the first “Don't-ask” didn't have was racism. As a Boston voter of a certain age, I seem to have been targeted for political ordure – suburban voters don't report receiving it. It started in 2010, when the Republican Governors' Association, led by then Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, was trying to take out independent gubernatorial candidate, Tim Cahill, in order to clear the way for Republican Charlie Baker. The snail-mailed flier (on right)  told voters like me that Tim Cahill and Deval Patrick did not represent our interests.

To illustrate, a picture showed Messrs. Cahill and Patrick standing at a podium on either side of a man black enough to make Governor Patrick look like Larry Bird. Beyond the fringe, no candidate would put such a thing out in his own name. Certainly not Charlie Baker. But a call to the professionals he had hired to manage his campaign produced a “...duh, no comment.” Don't ask and, above all, don't tell!

Mr. Baker's answer ought to have been: “This material has no place in our state. I repudiate it and I regret that its source was an erstwhile friend.” But his hired guns had faith in the conventional unwisdom of deniability. They led him to a well-earned defeat, and a lesson Mitt Romney may be yet to learn: In politics, a candidate cannot simply hire good people and delegate authority, as in business. He must be directly in charge of his message every single day.

Racist mailings now come directly from super-PACs. “The Mittell Household” recently received something from the American Life Sciences Innovation Council (on right), praising Congressman Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) for “fighting to keep the 'care' in Medicare.” Pictured were ten Caucasian seniors with toothy, white smiles. The identical mailing went to constituents of other congressmen of both parties -- presumably to selected white ones. A call to the sender found its telephone not in service. A call to Mr. Capuano's press office produced another “... duh, no comment.”

Citizens United made the point that corporations and wealthy individuals, who by right may publish books and newspapers, should not have a lesser right of “political speech” than labor unions and issue-advocacy groups. That is arguably valid. But in failing to recognize a single constitutional principle, the Court sealed-in hypocrisy like so many flakes of asbestos. It is the hypocrisy of Don't ask, don't tell; of the illegal daily number published, until betting was socialized, in reputable newspaper chains every morning; of the bootlegger and the speakeasy; and of the ultimate hypocrisy of the rationalizations for slavery itself. It is unsettled law and shall not stand.

David A. Mittell is a Boston-based political columnist and radio host who has been a columnnist and political writer for many newspapers including the Patriot Ledger and the Providence Journal. Toiday he is prtesntly the Senior Editor at the Duxbury Clipper.