RFK Jr.’s Massive Blind Spot
"Calling out the corruption is the easy part; making big change is far more about the 'how.' And Kennedy's rhetoric reveals he doesn't have the first clue."
There is a tragicomic irony to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential run — and it has nothing to do with any of his unorthodox theories. It centers around his campaign’s breathtaking hypocrisy on a subject that he actually knows a lot about: Big money in politics.
I am not a supporter of RFK, but like many other Americans who follow the news, it’s getting harder and harder to ignore him. So when he did his big primetime interview a few days ago with CNN’s Erin Burnett, I decided to pay attention.
First, Kennedy called himself a “populist” and an “idealist,” and directly compared himself to his father — a genuine hero to millions of Americans. Quite a claim. As I listened to Junior, I couldn’t help but remember Lloyd Bentsen's famous mocking of Dan Quayle in ‘88.
Then RFK went through some Democratic talking points, including prose you could pull almost verbatim from dozens of recent presidential speeches on the vanishing “American Dream”:
“When I was a kid said, if you worked hard, if you played by the rules you could buy a house, you could finance it, you could take a summer vacation, you could raise a family, you could put something aside for retirement — on one job.”
Hard to disagree with that, no matter which side of the aisle you’re on. But that’s the easy part; governing is much more about the “how.”
Next, Kennedy opined on the root cause of unmet policy challenges that have made life harder for hard-working Americans. In a Nader-esque diatribe, he described the damage that is caused by “corporate capture”:
“This corrupt merger between state and corporate power has absolutely subverted our democracy. And neither President Biden or President Trump has the capacity to address it because they’re part of that system. They’re both being financed by Black Rock and State Street and Vanguard and the military contractors and the pharmaceutical industries, and that system just spits out bad policies.”
He’s not wrong about the “corrupt merger between state and corporate power” — it’s just a fancy way of saying that there’s a river of money coursing through our system of electoral politics. Billions. Another record amount in the 2022 midterms. But again, changing that huge defect is about the “how.” And Kennedy’s rhetoric indicates that he hasn’t the slightest clue.
Let’s get the hypocrisy thing out of the way first: RFK chose the ultra-wealthy Nicole Shanahan as his running mate — after she’d funneled more than $4 million into two SuperPACS funding his campaign. After he named her as his Veep pick in late March, she was allowed to pump another $2 million directly into the campaign. That money is what’s keeping the enterprise in the black. For the moment.
But beyond those moderately embarrassing facts (after all, this is politics), the most disappointing part, for a guy who claims to be smart, is that he completely leaves out of the equation the most essential variable to creating systemic policy change: Congress. And the multi-billions that put members in their seats.
Presidents don’t unilaterally decree laws. They work with the House and Senate to write them. Some they sign. This, of course, is the very basis of our branch-separated system. It’s supposed to be hard to pass truly consequential legislation. But make no mistake: it’s the money that pits our representatives against the popular will of American voters. Gallup’s latest survey reveals that 15 percent of us approve of the job they’re doing. And it’s the cash that’s fueling the failure.
“We the People” like to think of our republic as a representative democracy: Elected leaders sent to the nation’s capital to achieve things on our behalf. But that’s not how it really works, unless you’ve invested a great deal of money into it. There’s plenty of research to back this up, but the granddaddy is a study conducted by Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University.
Using a single statistical model to analyze 1,779 questions on policy issues across more than 20 years, Gilens and Page found that the average American truly gets the crumbs. The policy preferences of “economic elites” — defined as the wealthiest 10 percent — were fifteen times as important in determining policy outcomes versus what ordinary folks wanted. They sum it up:
“In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule— at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose.”
A huge proportion of Americans already know this: According to Pew Research, 84 percent of Americans believe “special interest groups and lobbyists have too much say in what happens in politics.” More than 70 percent want to see restrictions on how much cash is allowed to slosh through the system. Conversely, 11 percent favor allowing unlimited money to be gifted into campaigns. Try to guess who comprises the 11 percent (or see previous paragraph).
Does Kennedy know this? He wants to start a political party called “We the People.” Does he know that there is a For the People Act waiting to be passed in Congress (and others bills) that would start to equalize our cash-soaked system? Is it ignorance? Or willful ignorance by way of political calculation (in spite of its popularity)? Only he knows.
But any presidential candidate who promises to reform big money’s stranglehold on our politics — no matter what party ticket they’re running on — should lead with the truth. And a truly big idea.
The real “swamp” that needs to be “drained” is the money flood that perpetually sinks the potential that otherwise might be possible on Capitol Hill.