Strange to be back in Washington DC. The last time I was here, it seemed less glossy, less fancy. DC has spruced up in the last few years and the process seems to have moved into overdrive. Buildings have been renovated. New glossy, glassy edifices have grown.
Who is taking up all this office space? Universally, the lawyers are on the march. Many of the new office buildings have the discreet multi-named logos of an obscure legal/lobbying firm. They are obscure to you or me, but if you’re a Senator or Representative in the Congress, you’ll probably be on first name terms with these guys (and gals).
If there is one issue that has reverberated with the public in the U.S. during this election, it has been the Trump chant: “Drain the swamp”.
Washington DC was famously built on a swamp and during the torrid summer months, you can feel the torpid heavy heat of the southern delta, that Washington DC has been compared with over many generations. The soupy, foggy, breathless heat of the summer has become a metaphor for the way politics is done here: obscure, hard to wade through, muggy.
The reality is that politics in America is very expensive — you could say that Americans get the best politicians money can buy.
If you want to be a member of the House of Representatives you have to raise anything from $3-15 million. You need that money to run ad campaigns and to staff up a team that will help you get your message across. Before you spend a penny, you will have to defeat your colleagues in a primary race. That costs a lot of money.
After that, the real money comes in. Countless hundreds of thousands of dollars will be spent analysing the electorate in your area and trying to target those that might give you the vote. The attack ads, the internet targeting, the leafletting will eat up the rest of the money.
If you want to run for the Senate, the average cost is more than $10million and rising, according to a non-profit, independent analysis. Its the same process as the House of Representatives, just on steroids.
Consider that Elizabeth Warren won the 2012 Senate race and her filings show that she raised $42.5 million, an astonishing amount of money.
So now you have to ask how and why this money is raised. Obviously, a lot comes from small donations. But huge amounts come from corporations and others who want things done. Are they all just donating money because they love the candidates?
Or are the people in those spanking new glass edifices doing what they look like they are doing?
As they say there …. “give me a break”.
