The same day Obama decided to formally declare war on Wall Street’s biggest corporations, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations can spend unlimited sums
of money to elect their favorite candidates and defeat their enemies. Bad timing, much?
If Obama passes this big-bank-busting regulation, it will almost
certainly be with mostly Democratic votes. And those big banks with
blank checks will threaten to sign oodles of cash over to Republican
challengers of all the Democrats who voted to destroy them. It’s like
the popular kid who, after months of deliberation, finally decides to
challenge the school bully to a showdown — only to learn that the
bully’s mom just married their teacher. If he backs down, it’ll be a
damning sign of weakness. If he beats up the bully, he’s got to expect
retribution on the report card.
There are two caveats to my observation. First the Supreme Court
decision doesn’t invent out of nothing the idea of corporate spending on elections.
Companies could already establish and donate to political action
committees (PACs), and as Dan argues, this ruling could arguably allow smaller businesses who lacked the resources to establish PACs to get in the game.
Second, the White House could strike back. The Obama administration’s response could take several forms, as Marc Ambinder outlines:
(1) Pass a law to overrule the Court; (2) Pass a law to make company
shareholders approve political spending; (3) Pass a “stand-by-your-ad”
requirement, such as “I’m Derek Thompson, the CEO of AtBixChan
Technologies, and I approve this message.” My sense is that those are
listed in increasing order of political likelihood.
