well but could not execute as a fighting force. lincolnlincoln's frustration buh a vacuous not getting results. a lot of people believe that india and lincoln became quite a sophisticated war strategist, and that he did form the basis, we know this from grant and sherman, for a march to the 20th century in what we now refer to as total war, and more brutal war. is a faceting book called the lieber code that came out a couple years ago about the start of francis lieber was a political scientist and an aide to lincoln who was very much a proponent of this hard war theory. he believed if you didn't stamp out the opponent, stamp them out to the point, that like a fire, and in burwood ketchikan and the rebellion would return. he was very see as an advisor to

henry halleck and advice to link and establish something called the lieber code, what was acceptable, unacceptable, which included a bunch -- a much wider territory that was acceptable in terms of civil society, the freeing of slaves, seizing of private property, the attack upon civilians under certain circumstances. and lieber was a very important person to the history of the rest of the war. so is a lot to be read into the. i don't think lincoln was looking ahead to what would happen after the war. he had a lot in front of him to conduct in the war he had at hand, so i doubt that he was thinking about the historical perspective going forward. but it's interesting to contemplate. may be one more question i gue guess. >> are we done? >> when the proclamation was

issued, what was the nature of the debate subsequently in congress, particularly with regard to the legal and constitutional questions that lincoln was working over in the previous six-month? >> i'm not sure i know enough to speak the debate in congress that would from their ford in 1863, wasn't the period i was studying, but you know, one key element that happened in 1862 that changed lincoln's chances for the emancipation proclamation as far as a legal document, is that he gained control of the supreme court. roger tani with the chief justice of the supreme court famous for the dred scott decision, the author of the dred scott decision had been a big enemy of lincoln's. had really, when lincoln

suspends habeas corpus, the rules that is unconstitutional. the president does have the power to do that. he is a bitter opponent of lincoln's. but lincoln makes several appointments that changed the complexion of the court so that time it to the case in 1863, the ones that declared civil war could be conducted under the same rules as a foreign war, he is now majority in the court in favor of his policies. so he's in a new position with respect to claims of emancipation. maybe one more. >> george, right here.

et al. distinguished gentlemen in the second row. >> i wanted to thank you for a really interesting talk. fantastic. if there's one central message or lesson you hope someone takes my book, what would that be? >> i could have planted you there for that one, couldn't i? [laughter] he's also the godfather of my children so it actually could have happened. [laughter] i would say the fragility and loneliness of leadership, and how we can do think about the decisions, about great men as having arrived at them with little consternation, very little uncertainty in making their standing history. when, in fact, there are a lot of things competing for those choices, and history turns on their making the right decision at the moment when it could have gone either way. and that if we understand that

first and foremost great men, great women are men and women that their humanity is really the essential element of their being, and that we share that with them. it gives a much deeper appreciation of history. take away all the halos and look upon them as real people. we will be inspired by them i think much more keenly. thank you all very much a plus but -- thank you all very much. [applause] >> booktv is on facebook. get author information a doctorate with authors during our life programs. facebook.com/booktv. >> booktv continues with darrell west, the author of "billionaires" talk about the superrich and the political power they wield. he profiles people like sheldon adelson, michael bloomberg, bill

gates, george soros in the koch brothers. this is about one hour 20 minutes. >> what i'd like to do is start with a very short video explaining why i wrote this book. it shows how my background and rural ohio led to my interest in this subject. so we'll start with the video. ♪ ♪ >> i started out poor. i grew up on a dairy farm in southern ohio. i used to milk the cows before i go to school every morning. when my parents first moved to that house, it did not have running water or an indoor

bathroom. the cows got running water before the house did, because it was more important for the barn to have it. through education, i attended public high schools in public universities. i spent 26 years teaching political science at brown university and met my first eleanor. -- billionaire. eventually came to washington, d.c., and now i work as a vice president at the leading think tank in the world. we now are seeing billionaires become much more active in trying to influence the election process. they're spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars pursuing their own parts and objectives, often in secret from the american public, and so it's really the combination of wealth and secrecy that is most

problematic about the contemporary period. i wrote the book to provide a much better understanding of who these people are and how they a using their money in the political process. the big challenge of our current period in having all these billionaires with great fortunes is often times they are able to influence elections and government in secret. i was talking with a wealthy individual, and he described what he called a get the senator strategy. if you can get one senator to basically put a hold on an appointment you don't like or stop a bill that you don't want, that can be a very powerful way to affect the political process.

the supreme court decisions have put huge loopholes into our campaign finance laws. there used to be much more require disclosure. now, will the people to influence the process. they can spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in secret and nobody else knows about it. wealthy people have the right to try and influence the process in a way that every other american does, but we need to know how this big money is coming into the political process. >> okay, so i'd like to thank george burroughs, christine jacobs and the vb team at brookings for producing deputy. i thought they really did a great job on that. so i wrote this book because i was really curious about

billionaires. i wanted to know who they are, how they got rich, and what are they doing with their immense wealth. i also wanted to know what are they like as individuals. between teaching at brown university for 26 years and nothing at brookings for about six years, i've had encounters with a number of different billionaires. so i think my experience revealed some interesting tidbits about the mentality and the viewpoint. i was once visiting a billionaire friend of mine in palm beach, and, of course, has a beautiful place right on the water overlooking the ocean. one morning we are sitting on the patio overlooking the water when helicopter flew very noisily right down the coast, had completely disturbing the serenity of that morning. and my friend rolled his eyes and said, oh, that's my neighbor. and it turns out that instead of driving this car two miles down the road to go to the golf course, this guy flew his

helicopter. so this is an example of billionaires annoying other billionaires. [laughter] in 2012, i had an experience of a billionaire by knowing me. i was asked that year about the possibility of donald trump speaking at the republican national convention, and i joked in the article that republicans should actually send him on an all expenses a trip around the world, by the country because of the ugly spoke at the convention, he would bring the party nothing but trouble. i didn't really think much about making those comments but the morning the quote appeared in the paper, i got a call from donald trump's assistance requesting my e-mail address. shortly thereafter his assistant sent me an angry message from the billionaire himself, and what trump had done was a paste my comment about them into the body of the e-mail and then he wrote in big block bold letters.

you are a fool. best wishes, donald j. trump. [laughter] i really appreciated the best wishes there. i should have is not framed in my office. the only thing i didn't understand was he put air quotes around the fool and that maybe think that's actually being more stupid than a typical full. [laughter] prior to the interaction i had realized there are actually gradations in being a fool. and that's the note that he sent. but it was the first billionaire that i met at brown university who propelled this book, and that actually is ted turner. about 20 years ago ted turner came to brown to give a lecture, and his visit was noteworthy because he had been kicked out of brown for disciplinary code violations, mainly involving wine and women, and i'm not sure if it was in that order or not. so we hosted them for election

and became with his then wife jane fonda. so this was a big deal for university. it was a glitzy occasion. he gave a very funny speech. he said that his favorite thing about having a ranch at west was being able to urinate off the front porch, which for this ivy league crowd that was a little racy for us but, you know, we laughed. but then he turned more serious and in his remarks he discussed well, he said the first million is the hardest. after that, money begets money and everything else is easier. wealthy people have social, economic, and political connections, and those things make it much easier to make money. ..

>> michael bloomberg this year has0 million into fighting gun violence, he's also very active in promoting immigration reform. george soros supports a number of liberal grassroots organizations. tom story is probably one -- stire is probably one of the less known politically active billionaires, but this year he pledge today raise public awareness about climate change, $100 billion. so in researching this phenomenon, i discovered it's really not an american phenomenon, but it is a global development. billionaires actually have run for office in 12 different countries around the world. and most of the time they actually end up winning. the most famous is burr plus

coney in -- bear plus sconeny in italy, this raises important questions about excessive political influence, conflicts of interest and poor transparency when it comes to money and politics. we are seeing what i call in the book the wealthification of politics and society at many different levels, and many have written about the economic consequences of wealth. i wanted to look at the political impact of great wealth. so there are 1645 known billionaires according to "forbes" magazine and 492 of them live in the united states. and i think it's really important to understand the impact they're having on our political process. one of the things i wanted to look at is there are several aspects that i think are particularly important in terms of the context in which this activism is taking place. one is the high level of income

concentration we've seen. here i have a chart from thox picketty and -- thomas picketty and emanuel saez which shows the rise between 1913 and 2012. income concentration reached a high -- this is among the top 1% in terms of the percent of the income that they earned -- in 1928 it reached a high point of 21% meaning the top 1% of americans at that point in time got 21% of the income. but then you can see in the years after world war ii the income concentration dropped. it actually reached a low point of 8% in 1976. so people say, you know, the wealthy always are going to be wealthy, and every country has this. when you look at american history, it actually fluctuates up and down. policies make a difference. and, of course, what we've seen in recent years is it's now come back up, and it's now back to

about 20%. the top 1% have very distinctive political views compared to the general public. political scientists ben pick, larry bartels and jason searight did an interesting study where they compared the political views of the top 1% versus the general public. they used a battery of questions to each of them and then, essentially, compared the results. and what you can see here is on a variety of issues -- here i talk about medicare, views about schools and also views about health care -- on all of these issues the top 1% have distinctive views and generally prefer a more limited role of government. 87% of the wealthy favor cuts in medicare in order to reduce budget deficits compared to 27% of the general public. in regard to to schools, 35% of the rich believe government should spend whatever is

necessary to insure all children have a good public education compared to 87% of the general public that feels that way. and then on health care, 41% of the wealthy say they are willing to pay more in taxes to provide health care for all compared to 59% of the general public. so the rich are very politically active, they obviously have a lot of money, they have distinctive views. perhaps one of the more troubling things that i discover in the course of doing my research was what one wealthy individual described to me as a get a senator strategy. i heard that term, and i thought, okay, tell me about this. what are you talking about? and what this individual said is that there are some ultra wealthy individuals who practice this particular strategy. i mane, we all -- i mean, we all see congressional gridlock, we see the hyperpolarization, the extreme partisanship that afflicts our process. it turns out that big money is in the middle of some of those

problems. the wealthy people have discovered that the way to stop legislation is to find a sympathetic senator and get him or her to, basically, use obstructionist tactics. this can include placing holds on appointments that you don't want -- and i should point out these are secret holds, so we generally don't know who is behind the hold or what their particular reason is, we can just see the fact that these appointments languish for months and months without any movement -- you can filibuster to stop legislation. so there are a variety of different activities that fall within this category. the new york times actually had a very interesting story about this involving bill ackman who's a wall street financier and his campaign against herbalife. ackman has been on this campaign against herbalife. he has lots of complaints about its business model and has short the stock. he was able to get massachusetts senator ed markey to write

letters to the securities and exchange commission as well as the federal trade commission demanding an investigation into this company. and the day that that investigation became public, the stock price fell which was a big help to mr. ackman. kind of similar to a recent new yorker cartoon that some of you may have seen which shows this wealthy man in this really nice office with really big windows saying, "i own one plane, two yachts, four houses and five politicians." when you look historically, we often have had various organizations in american society that help us keep track of what is going on in the political process. and, of course, the news media is a big part of that. they have been the major oversight organization. reporters are the people who help the rest of us keep track of what is going on in the political process.

it's a way to kind of assume some balance in the system. but, of course, what we've seen in recent years has been the news media have been devastated by the financial crisis and the growth of free information on the internet. and this has been especially harmful at the level of state government. here i have a chart drawing on research conducted by the american journalism review which, basically, shows over time the number of journalists covering state government. they've done surveys, they found that in 1998 there were 513 journalists that were basically working full time cover state government. by 2003 that number had dropped to 468. by 2009, which is the last year in which they have done this survey, that number was down to 355. i think most of the people i talk to think if you actually did this survey today, that number would be a lot less than 355. and so as a result of both the

opportunities and the lack of oversight, some billionaires have shipped a lot of money into state referenda and state policy advocacy, knowing that there is actually a lot less oversight there than what we see here in our nation's capital. so we've seen people get very involved in same-sex marriage, marijuana legalization, immigration, pension reform, obamacare, you name the issue. there often is big money behind this. so the problem that i see in thinking about this whole topic of money in politics especially when it comes to billionaires is a lot of people suffer from ideological blinders. when i talk to liberals, they love it when liberal billionaires spring into action and spend a lot of money. and, you know, if you support immigration reform, you think it's great michael bloomberg is investing a lot of money.

if you're worried about gun violation, you think that is a good thing. -- violence, you think that is a good thing. conservatives love it when their rich people do exactly the same thing. but i think what all of us need to do is really step back and think about a system as a whole. we need to think about the impact of great wealth on government, on society and on economic opportunity. and in the conclusion of my book, i argue that we need policies that promote better transparency and promote broader economic opportunity. henry ford was someone who understood the value of recently-paid employees. here's a picture of him. he was famous for paying his factory workers double the going rate, and when people asked him about it, he said, look, i need customers to buy my products. it's in my self-interests for me as a factory owner to pay my workers a good share not only because it helped them live, but they then can purchase my cars.

and so businesses need workers in order to thrive and to be successful. so i suggest that we need more equitable tax policy, we need public investments in education and health care, and i close the book with a personal story saying that i am living proof of this argument because in the last chapter i tell the story about being a young kid who woke up one day with swollen joints, a sore throat and a high fever. a doctor looked at my symptoms and immediately sent me to the hospital. i had drop developed rheumatic fever which is a bacterial disease that attacks the joints and the heart valves. and at age 11 i had rheumatic fever. now, today nobody in america gets that disease. it is a developing world illness, there are still many kids in africa who get this, and they don't have access to antibiotics.

many of the people who get this even today end up dying by age 20. but in 1966 when i had rheumatic fever, i was fortunate that there was a miracle cure, pencillen, that had just gone on the market a few decades earlier. it had gone into mass production x. through a publicly-funded hospital, i was cured. i went on to a productive life. i went to a public university, got a graduate degree, taught in the ivy league for 26 years and then ended up teaching at what i view as the world's top think tank. so is i won the lottery in -- so i won the lottery in terms of life fortunes. dale, who's my friend who's also shown in this picture, was not quite as fortunate as i was. after this picture was taken, he was in a farming accident and lost his big toe. he never got much of an education. he struggled economically his entire life, and he died last year. so we have two young boys who grew up in exactly the same

area, two very different outcomes. there, obviously, are many things that go into life fortunes and explain why some people had a an easier time than others, but we need public policies that keep the american dream alive for the next generation of young kids. thank you very much. [applause] so what i'd like to do is to invite our panelists up, and we will continue our conversation. [background sounds]

[background sounds] >> i'd like to welcome our distinguished visitors today, all these individuals have great experience in various aspects of american politics. they've reported on many of the major controversies in the field. peter overby is the power, money and influence correspondent at national public radio. i do have to say i like that title a lot.

>> thank you. [laughter] >> that should keep you very busy in this town. >> none of it has rubbed off on me though. [laughter] >> so i'm sure many of you have heard peter on the radio, he's been at npr since 1994. he's covered all of the most important money and politics issues; the newt gingrich funding issues, bill clinton's fundraising programs, the passage of mccain-fine gold, the jack abramoff scandal, citizens united, and now the recent rise of super pacs. he has won several awards such as the alfred i. dupont columbia silver baton and also the radio and television correspondents' annual award for excellence. ruth marcus is a columnist and editorial writer at the washington post. she focuses on american politics and domestic policy. she's been with the post since 1984. she joined the national staff in 1986 and has covered a wide variety of issues including

campaign finance, the justice department, the supreme court and the white house. she joined the editorial board in 2003 and began writing a regular column in 2006. john harwood is the chief washington corps bottom for cnbc and also a political writer for "the new york times." he writes the weekly column "political memo" for the paper, and in addition to cnbc, john offers political analysis on nbc's "meet the press" and also the pbs show "washington week in review." brody mullins is a reporter for "the wall street journal" based in d.c., and in that position he covers business, lobbying and campaign finance. he started his career at the national journal's congress daily and later at roll call where he covered congress and lobbying. he has twice won the everett mckinley dirksen award for distinguished reporting on congress. he also won the george polk award and received an award from

the national press club for best political reporter under the age of 33. so i want to -- >> back when i was under -- >> not eligible. [laughter] >> well, that's still a great way to start your career. i'm going to start with peter. so you have great expertise in money and politics. what do you see as the political impact of billionaires, and has their influence changed over time? >> well, billionaires' influence has changed just because when you start looking at the history of money and politics, there weren't any billionaires yet. you have the inflation stack to have. -- factor. but there's always been big money in politics. that's a given in america. one popular example is eugene mccarthy's campaign in 1968 was basically financed by 11 guys. so, you know, you have that history. what you have now is after a

period of more disclosure, more openness, more campaign contribution limits, you have a rise in unwanted contributions and a rise in nondisclosed money being prominent in the political system, the 501c4s and other 501c groups, but mainly c4s. and you talk about the, you know, the finite number of billionaires many this country -- in this country. we don't know how many of them are active in politics. we know a few of them. we know the koch brothers, tom stire, george soros, etc. but most of the people on that list we don't know if they're politically active or not, and if they're active through 501c4s, we can't know unless

it leaks. so, you know, there's an undefined -- it's an unanswerable question. >> but i asked it, so you have to answer it by definition. >> yeah. [laughter] i gave you a history instead. >> no, that's actually very helpful to have that background. so, ruth, what do you see as the political impact of billionaires? >> well, you know, it's very interesting because in some ways you could sort of go to the history and say -- and even kind of leaving aside the inflation point, you know, when millionaire was a big deal -- the capacity of big money, now big money has to start with a b, but it used to start with an m. the capacity of big money to influence politics has always been there, you know, go back to robber barons. but go to the modern era and look at buckley v. valeo. the public concerns that were unleashed, and correctly so actually, on citizens united to

some extent has their genesis in buckley, the capacity of individual billionaires to spend as many billion and as many of their billions and billions as they want by themselves in politics has been there since 1974. and actually one question we can ask is not why is this happening now and wring our hands about it, but why wasn't it happening previously? because limits on individual spending and independent expenditures have never been in place. i do think that fascinating to think about that question because there has been a change in the culture where there seems to be more willingness on both sides to have political spectrum or throughout the political spectrum if you throw in mayor bloomberg to spend millions and be kind of proud of it.

i couldn't agree more with the questions that issues and concerns that daryl and peter have raised about secrecy because it is, in fact, the toxic nexus between big money and secrecy where you have the biggest problem and the scariest unknown figure in your presentation is the number of reporters at statehouses. because when you take big money and you take secrecy and you take away coverage, you have a huge problem. but that said, i think that the willingness of these billionaires to be kind of unabashed about their desire to influence the political process is to some extent, i mean, we know about a lot of sheldon edelson's spending because he was proud to tell us about it. the kochs, who used to operate in even more secrecy, have just decided to embrace it. people like tom stire kind of

want the coverage. it's a fascinating -- maybe to have the capacity to billionaires, you also have to climb of want to have the -- kind of want to have the ego to have people know it. but in some ways, i think that's a kind of interesting one. >> so, brody, you focus on business law being in campaign finance. what are you seeing in this area? >> well, the first thing i want to say is just my comments are just my own comments, not of my billionaire, rupert murdoch, who's a really good guy and is just trying to help the country. [laughter] but i think that -- >> as is my billionaire. [laughter] jeff bezos. >> good point. >> right. [laughter] so i think part of the way the system's been developed now is

for the law of unintended consequences that came from the 2002 campaign finance reform where at the time -- legislation where at the time businesses and unions and billionaires could give unlimited sums of money to the political parties, and at the time everyone thought that was a bad thing. and so we passed legislation to ban these unlimited contributions to political parties, and a few years later that money not able to go to political parties started going to these outside groups. and it took a few years to get to the system we are now. what we basically used to have is a system where people could give million dollar donations to the republican party or democratic party, and we knew who was giving the money, and it went to two sort of center -- two forces that were bringing politics together. they were both trying to be big ten. and we had at the time southern democrats, we had republicans in new england, we had people who

are all acrses the spectrum in -- across the spectrum in both political parties, and they came to washington, and they sort of compromised. people from various parts of the country agreed with each other, whether they were republicans or democrats. and now you've taken that money and said you can't go to political party, it goes to these outside groups which are, for the most part, pretty extreme. so you don't have candidates coming to washington supported by sentry mying groups, instead you have candidates who are, in general, more extreme. you have no republicans in new england, no democrats, for the most part, in the south. california is almost all republican -- sorry, the coasts are democrat, the middle country is republicans. so you come to washington, and people can't compromise. i think that was really all in effect an unintended consequence of the 2002 reform. >> don? what's your view of the political impact of billionaires? >> first of all, i think we'll have an interesting controlled

experiment. if sales of this book make you a billionaire, we will find out -- [laughter] >> and if this happens, i will be happy to disclose that publicly. [laughter] >> well, i must say i think of topics like the effect that billionaires, a little bit like i think of the topic of, say, media bias which conservatives complain about. true, it's a factor, but i tend to think it's not as large a factor independently as the critics fear it is. and you talked about that in your book, you know? does obama's election, re-election -- is that proof that money doesn't determine election outcomes? i think it doesn't. it influences them, but it's one of a number of factors. and, you know, brody was describing really structural changes in american politics

that, to me, are the greatest determinant of election outcomes, and those have been going on for some time. like decades, since the 1950s. our politics was sorted out. i also think that if you look at it more broadly, you can make an argument that the real problem is not -- the problem with money in politics is much bigger than the 1%. maybe it's the 15%. because the way we've had a divergence of life fortunes and economic success in our country you could say, you could look at our system and say that public policy is made for the interests of upper middle class people, not necessarily billionaires only, because of the rise of income inequality and the at stratification of the society and way that perpetuates itself through our education system and

many other issues. so i think it matters. i think money tends to balance out whether it's billionaire-to-billionaire money or billionaire-to-online money. i was so struck in 2004 when howard dean, in a phenomenon that really had nothing to do with billionaires, i believe it was the third quarter of 2003 raised more money in that quarter than bill clinton had raised in any quarter when he was running for re-election as president of the united states. so you -- the technology and information infrastructure that we have makes it possible to innovate and figure out new ways of balancing the effects of people like the koch brothers or george soros. >> okay. so john was mentioning the election impact in 2012. i want to ask about the 2014 length. so harry reid is, of course, regularly attacking the koch brothers. tom stire's next general climate

action super pac has run ads taunting the koch brothers. i think that's risky, myself. s, the ir -- stire has -- [inaudible] i'll just throw this out for anybody in the panel, how is all of this dueling billionaire act thetivity going to affect the -- activity going to affect the 2014 election, if at all? >> actually, i think i would argue not very much at all. it's a little bit, and we saw this when senator reid was having his kind of daily attack on the koch brothers and saying what's this about. and really what it's about to me, not to sound too cynical, is there isn't anything else to talk about on both sides. >> so cynical. [laughter] >> and where better to be cynical than on this panel with this group. i just wanted to, you know, stake out the cynicism

portfolio. look, i really think that that it's a little bit on both sides of a base revving-up mechanism, to go on and attack the other guy's billionaire front. but i don't think it's the kind of thing that resonates with most voters, and i really think what most voters seeing this stuff should say is, okay, that's fine, but what are you all about? which actually gets me to something i wanted to challenge john on -- >> food fight. >> a challenge in the nicest possible way. because you were saying you thought things would work themselves out, billionaire versus billionaire. and i really take your point, which i think is a really good one about the powerful impact of internet advertising and somewhat leveling the playing field. but in terms of billionaire versus billionaire, how do you stake that assertion against what i think are the really kind

of troubling differentials in darrell's chart about attitudes of the -- these weren't billionaires, but these were the top 1% -- clear ideological differences from the general population which definitely tilted in the right word direction. not correct direction. >> john, do you want to respond? >> well, sure. but are you talking about a disparity in a partisan sense or disparity between the interests of, or the political views of billionaires versus everybody else? >> well, i think it might end up being the same question, right? if you're a billionaire and you think there should be less government spending on health care or less government spending on education, you're going to probably gravitate toward one political party rather than another. >> yes. but a couple things. first of all, that is also in the service of the point that i was making more broadly about people with money. not billionaires, but people

with money. upper middle class people. they care a lot more about deficit reduction than ordinary people do. so to some extent, that is, that's not a function of billionaires, it's a function of income inequality and different ways of looking at the world. but you also have, as the gene mccarthy story indicated that peter mentioned, you've got billionaires who individual, individuals who are willing to spend money in the service of values that are out of step with their class. and, in fact, the democrats' improvement politically speaking with people with money is an important factor in leveling what we're talking about. democrats are doing a lot better with people with postgraduate

educations, successful baby boom liberals who have gone into business. and so i think that gives them capacity to respond to the the, quote, libertarian, shrink government kind of world view. maybe not in a dollar-for-dollar way, but in a way that is sufficient to advance competing arguments. >> peter and brody, how do you see money playing out in the 2014 elections? >> i think that it's -- i'm sorry, the money or billionaires? >> either. >> okay. i think we see hints that the billionaire issue resonates with voters. i just did a story last week about that mentioned the senate race in michigan where they had

just, conservation voters had just run an ad tying the republican candidate terry lynn land to the koch brother, and suffolk university pollsters were polling just as that ad was ending, and they get to the open-ended question of what's the first thing you think of when i say the name of the candidate. and for terry lynn land, a significant number -- i think it was 4% of the respondents -- said first thing they thought of when her name was mentioned was koch brothers, big business. basically, that phrase. so, you know, does this tick to the election? -- tick to the election? -- stick to the election? i don't know. but the fact that it's registering at all that way, i think, it goes back, basically, to harry reid kind of setting the stage for the democrats to do this kind of advertising.

and koch groups attack tom stire. i think that that just plays into it. >> brody, do you think these attacks and counterattacks are going to make any difference, or is the election going to end up being decided on other issues? >> you know, it's hard to say. stepping back a little bit, we're still in a period of elections where most of the money is still being spent by candidates and political parties through the old system. and the money being spent by the outside groups and donated by billionaires is still not a majority of the amount of money being spent. obviously, it's just a few names that are putting the money out there, but so far elections are being battled the way we want them battled, which is by candidate. that's going the change. this election actually may be the tipping point where outside groups and billionaires and millionaires spend more money on the election than candidates themselves. and if we keep going in this direction, we'll get to 2016 and beyond where all of a sudden the candidates aren't being able to

get their own messages out because these other groups are battling above them about their own campaign. and that's the point where i think it's pretty dangerous for democracy, when the candidates who are running for office aren't even allowed to control their own message. and we're not there yet. but we're heading there, and there's no signs of legislation to change anything. and i think that'll be pretty scary prospect if it comes this election or the one after. >> i do think, though, we ought to remember that ads matter less and messages matter less than they did before. so much of our our politics is structural. and it is well known to the vast majority of voters what team they're on. and their cultural identification, their, you know, people who care about the environment and income inequality and don't like prevalence of guns in our society, no know what -- know what team they're on and know

which way to advance that teem, and the same is true of the people on the other side. you've got increasing stratification of our politics by race. white voters overwhelmingly in very large numbers vote for republican candidates, and blacks and increasingly hispanics are locked down for democrats. and so the influence of the attack ad and other campaign materials, i think, it's on a pretty narrow band of voters. >> when we look ahead to 2016, it strikes me democrats haven't quite decided how they feel or what they want to do about billionaires. on the one hand, you have harry reid who's kind of fighting them rather publicly on the floor of the senate, and then you have the ready for hillary super pac, which is not quite her super pac, but it's -- >> ready to be. >> yeah, it's ready to be. [laughter] is signing up billionaires. and so i think democrats can't

decide whether they should fight them or join them. so when we look ahead to 2016, how do you see this whole thing evolving both on the republican side as well as the democratic side? anybody that wants to jump. >> well, one thing that we're seeing already is that with the koch brothers and with a lesser extent to tom stire, the billionaires aren't building their own ground organizations. you know, you keep going this direction -- you do tv ads, you do ground organization to, the koch network has its own brokered database just like a political party, where's the line between a political party and something like the koch network? i'm not saying that the koch network is a political party, but they're doing a lot of the things that a political party does. >> well, you mentioned super pacs, and so i think it's

really important to continue to distinguish between the kind of billionaire spending that we're because we can lament or discuss the lives of the superpac as a portion in american politic, but at least we know through super pacs what billionaires or millionaires or the rest of us are contributing and spending. and i think that my bigger worry is not billionaires banding together and billionaire super pacs, but billionaires spending money that i don't even know about. and to that extent i guess i'd argue that the fault isn't in our billionaires, it's in the rules that we've allowed to be written that allow them to operate without any sunshine on them. the fact that we have a tax code that doesn't, that allows tax

exempt organizations to engage in what anybody out there, you know, from first grade on understands is political activity is really a criminal public policy, and it needs to be changed. the irs understands it needs to be changed. the irs needs to get itself out of the business of politics, and everybody will be better off. and the sec needs to get itself into the business of these things. but we either need regulatory changes or legislation to make that happen, and i think we all understand the entrenched interests that work against that. which leads to a 2016 setup that doesn't just see the explosion of super pac spending that's disclosed, but the continuing rise of 501c4,501c6 spending that's not disclosed. >> brody? >> yeah, i couldn't agree more. all of us, as reporters, are

going to be in favor of discan closure. but the problem is often times we don't know who is spending money. so ten years ago if we were to all get in this room and sit down, try to come up with the worst possible system for financing our campaigns, we'd probably end up with what we have now where people could pend as much money as they want to -- could spend as much money as they want to, and they don't have to disclose who they are. and the disclosure part, i think, are the worse. >> i would say, darrell, to pick up on your point about ready for hillary, i don't think democrats are ambivalent about how they feel about billionaires, and i think every single one would be welcome if they showed themselves to be on the democratic team and bring their checkbook. it is not a, billionaire is not a disqualification for the democratic party as long as you're on their side. and they've got some, and they'll use them as best they can. and, again, you know, on the influence of these super wealthy

spenders, i think back to sheldon aid edelson. he bet his money on newt gingrich, you know? how effective was that? where did that go? you have another one, i forget the name of the guy, who invested very heavily in rick santorum. >> [inaudible] >> yeah. and i'm sure any democrat would be delighted if he spends a billion dollars on rick santorum in the next primary election. but, you know, there's only -- you can make a difference, but there's only so much of a difference you can make. >> okay. why don't we open the floor to questions from the audience. there's a gentleman in the very back with his hand up. so we have a mona will come back to you -- microphone that will come back to you. if you'd like to submit questions, you can do so through hashtag billionaires.

>> thank you very much. i'm lauren her scherr. about -- hershey. about 30 years ago, i was a guest scholar here at brookings. >> welcome back. >> thank you. i come back whenever i can. lots of questions i could ask as an attorney who helped to break up at&t, but i want to try and make it easy. i'm a virginian. there's a federal trial in richmond recently, $177,000 bought some favors. will you please comment on that? >> what comment are you -- what -- could you be more specific in -- >> well, i think in about three years there'll be a supreme court called u.s. v., you know, robert and maureen o'donnell -- mcdonald, sorry, or vice versa, mcdonald v. u.s. so the question is, how does that play out in the psyche or the consciousness of the american voter today? and i could give you sort of a other side of the coin. there's two new populisms going

on in the united states. one is the tea party, the other is the left wing in the democratic party. senator from ohio and senator from massachusetts represent them. i invite your comments. what else is there out there that is happening that is illustrated or that you would interpret or comment on from these two phenomena, the new populisms, left, right, democrat, republican and the mcdonald conviction in richmond about two weeks ago. >> so about the mcdonalds, i would say that to the outside observer, cynical voter, the corruption that was disclosed there and that the jury decided was criminal behavior there really just ratifies what voters, many voters at least think is business as usual. i mean, i've always been

struck -- peter, probably brody, john, you probably have as well -- by the degree many voters actually think the system is so much more corrupt than it actually is, that there are, you know, lobbyists coming with bags of money and plopping them on the desks of lawmakers for their own personal use. i mean, what's really interested about -- >> and pay off reporters too. >> and the brilliant thing about the mcdonald case is that if he was dealing with a campaign donor and getting campaign contributions that were disclosed and he was simultaneously doing relatively minor official acts for this donor, would there be a criminal case there at all? the benefits -- probably not. the benefits were going to him personally, and that really transformed it. but i think from the point of view of voters, it's probably all of a piece of this big,

disgusting mess that they think of a as, a, washington, and b, politics. >> yeah. i think the public doesn't recognize the distinction that washington runs on that campaign contributions aren't bribes. >> i would just say that i think elements of the left and right populism you referred to flow from the same source which is that our system, our economy is not delivering rising incomes to families in a way anywhere like we did in 2002. and i think that engenders a, you know, people get different notions of why that's true, and some of it could flow from the corruption of the system, some of it could flow from immigration, some of it could flow from the increasing wealth

of the 1% and the ways in which the 1% tilt the playing field. but all of those things, i think, the underlying fact is that people are anxious and scared about their economic futures, and that plays out in the political process. >> christine has a question from our webcast audience. >> thanks, darrell. you touched on it a little bit with your remarks earlier, but for the larger panel, can you get into the, your perspective on the psychology of billionaires, what drives them, what makes them tick? who are these people? >> great question. >> i will say one thing that i don't, i don't think i have any friends who are billionaires, but i have a friend who might be close to that. and i think that i'm struck in talking to him at the way in

which he -- oddly, in my opinion -- feels besieged by the political system. like this whole notion of, you know, pitchforks and people coming after people with money. that engenders a sort of an attitude of trying to push back really hard. remember having a conversation with this guy at a college reunion shortly before the 2012 election, and he was asking me why does obama hate successful people so much? and i didn't know how to answer it, because it seemed like a crazy question actually. but there is a sense that -- and i don't know if there's a psychologically, there's a psychology that's part guilt or if it's simply, you know,

self-protection, but there is a sense of even else who's not doing so well being after them. it's a little bit comical to my way a of thinking -- way of thinking. that's the only exposure i've had to what i think might be responsive. >> well, i don't know any billionaires, or i didn't until i met darrell. [laughter] >> i like your optimism, by the way. >> this may be counterintuitive, but i don't think billionaires spend all this money on elections for pure business point of view. i don't think the koch brothers say we need to change these policies so we can make more money. i think it's how they feel ideologically, whether you're on the right or the left. i could be wrong, but these guys make billions of dollars a year, and they're only spending $100 million, and they think it's going to affect their business? wouldn't they spend more money if they thought this went

directly to their bottom lines? i feel the same thing for sheldon edelson. he's not spending money on casino regulations, he's spending -- >> he's spending some money on casino regulations. >> some money. i just don't think a lot of these people, if they thought these elections were so important to their own bottom lines, they would spend more money. so i think it's more ideological. >> edelson seems to want to be a person of power within the republican conservative movement yeah, he threw away his money on gingrich, but the result of that was now all the candidates are coming to him and saying, hey, how about me? so i think for him, he likes to be in a position of power, and his spending in the 2012 cycle helped establish him that way.

>> you know, i think one thing that we haven't touched on is the really interesting -- and it kind of goes to the what are they motivated by, are they simply trying to protect their wealth, or are they trying to promote their world view, and i think it's probably more the latter. one of the things i think is a really interesting distinction is the difference between billionaires spending their money on candidates and billionaires spending their money on causes. and it strikes me in part because of the countervailing influence of individual donations through the internet that billionaires spending money on causes -- and youly -- you write about this, darrell, actually could be more powerful depending on what your position is and where the billionaires sort themselves out. more pernicious role in terms of the impact on state referenda. my billionaire spent, steve

bezos, i don't know if he thinks of himself that way, spent a lot of money on a cause -- >> you're not going to get far if you call him steve. >> jeff, oh, my god. [laughter] you know what? there you go, i'm gone. i retire. could we, like, undo the tape? why was i -- not enough caffeine this morning. jeff bezos, my billionaire, spent a lot of money on a referendum in washington state on marriage equality which passed. great use of money. i would, i would venture to guess that his 2.5 million there was a lot better return on investment than 2.5 million on newt gingrich or whoever his individual candidate of choice might have been. and so i think that's a really interesting distinction to raise on the billionaire and billionaire incentive to be involved in this and psychology of the involvement. >> i think -- >> thanks for saving me, john.

>> i think that is an important point, kind of the state level activity that we're seeing especially around referenda, policy ideas and so on. because the thing is, if you think about, you know, kind of two or three or five million dollars going into a medium-sized state like if you want to talk about roi, it's like you can go have an impact. and so in some of these campaigns you end up with one-sided campaigns, and if you have a weak media role, that can be a bad combination. if there's a lot of competition, if it's, you know, a fair campaign and there's spending on both sides, you know, that's not something i would worry about myself. >> just wait to see what happens when they try to outlaw helipads on golf courses. [laughter] >> yeah. that palm beach guy's going to be in big trouble. peter. we have -- could we get a microphone over here? it's coming up from behind you. >> thank you. i'm peter shutly, retired from

brookings. i'm struck at the moderation of the panel on this issue, you know, this money's always influenced u.s. politics, it's not new, there's democrat, there's republicans. so it's on both sides. and i think this is a much more nefarious issue, development than the possible seems to believe on. and let me throw two thoughts out and get your feedback, two negative thoughts. one is the rising public opinion polls that show the american public thinks the system can be bought. higher and higher percentages. i think it's in the mid 80s or something. and when the public has such a negative view of the influence of money, that's terrible for the whole system. a second negative impact is in the past a would-be candidate needed to develop a broad base of financial support, get lots of contributors to run.

now all you need is one billionaire. you don't need to develop any message that affects the broad swath of the people that's broadly accepted. you get edelson behind you, and that's all you need. a second major negative impact of billionaires on money. reactions? >> gingrich didn't win the republican nomination, and obama was reelected. as a surface level response, i think that, first of all, i don't think it's the case that you look back and candidated in the past -- candidates in the past that didn't have wealthy patrons who were making it happen for them, that's everybody from ronald reagan who had a group of very, very wealthy -- [inaudible] richard nixon, gene mccarthy. i just, i don't think it is that

radically different, and i don't think that it is that sure a guarantee of success. i do think it's corrosive that people believe the system is corrupt. but, again, i think a lot of that flows from their feelings about their own economic prospects and what they're getting out of -- [inaudible] >> brody, you wanted to jump in on that? >> yeah. and i agree that money has always been in politics. what i was trying to say earlier is the is i think how -- the problem so i think how the money is being spent. that being run by unaccountable, outside groups who often don't need to disclose their sources of money or who they're spending money for. i think that's the problem. so you end up having candidates coming to washington who are beholden to the extremes of either party and not coming to washington with a sense of more balance. i think that's the problem sort of how the money's flowing, not

that there is money. >> and i could add an international component to this, because as i mentioned earlier, billionaires have run for office in 12 different countries and often have been very successful. bear plus coney is, of course, the most famous example. when you start looking at what happened once these people actually are in office, i mean, the point that peter races about -- raises about public cynicism, in all of these countries there are always charges of cronyism, conflicts of interest, insider dealings. italy, thailand, georgia where there have been a lot of evidence of this. of course, in the developing world, you know, they don't have the rule of law that we have, they don't have the economic opportunities. in many of those countries, they have a small number of billionairings. the thing that actually makes me most optimistic in terms of the future is the fact that we have 500 billionaires, and on most issues there's some diversity of viewpoints among them. you could go into other

countries, there may be three billionaires or five billionaires or seven billionaires, they always have very close relationships with the people and government, and that leads to massive public cynicism in those countries. >> and perhaps even less effective regulation and disclosure than we have. >> absolutely. steven. >> thank you. my name is steven -- [inaudible] i'm a guest scholar here at brook, woking in international -- working in international entrepreneurship as a foreign policy tool. i think the point that was made about the corrosive effect of all of this is a really important one because it's one of the reasons why there's so much excitement about your book. we all know this is happening, and here's a book that talks about it. and one of the things that i thought was especially interesting were the under-the-radar revelations that you made, the ackman/markey herbalife example. we all know about the few household name billionaires and the candidates they've supported. what we don't know is what we don't know. and so when you match that with

the chart that you showed about the decline in investigate i have journalism -- investigative journalism, which is why i especially wanted to can ask this question of this panel of journalists -- you have a very nervous-making situation. and so my question is, it seems to me that there are two answers. and i'd like to hear your ideas about which of these is most realistic to happen. >> let me just answer your question. don't give us the answers. >> well, no. [laughter] the first question is what is the -- how do we increase the transparency given the numbers you showed of journalist declines. or, second option is campaign finance reform and the likelihood of that. >> so i actually can say something optimistic for a change which is i would suggest that among major news organizations there are, is actually more resources dedicated toward covering money

and politics now than there was when i first started writing about it in 1995-'96. you were doing it then, peter, but it was not a boom area of journalism, and we learned after the 1996 fundraising scandal that it was really worth paying a lot of resources and attention to. and i think it's much, there is no major news organization without a reporter dedicated, i'd venture to guess, toward covering money and politics. that's a really good thing. it doesn't counterbalance the failure of many news organizations to have local and state-level reporters or to even have reporters dedicated toward covering their congressional delegations. think about the cunningham corruption which was there for the looking at. you looked at his financial disclosure forms, you went to look at the properties he had, and it was evident on his face.

it took reporting to bring that to light. on the broader question of the prospects for campaign finance reform, you know what they are. >> i will sound a more pessimistic note than ruth -- >> he just wants to fight with me. [laughter] ..

my newspaper yesterday announced 5% pay cut for every single person who worked there and warned of impending layoffs. the paper has shrunk dramatically from the size that it had. so has "the miami herald." the "herald" has shrunk even more. so i think that's just an emblem of the data that you saw in darrell's presentation of a of e shrinking number of people covering state legislators on this topic and every other top topic. >> do you have someone who has a question likes the gentleman right there. yes. >> my name is michael beckel. i'm a report at the center for public integrity on the money and politics beat, and going back to 96 and 2000-2002, a last round of campaign finance reform laws came out of the scandals,

and i was curious if the panelists that attitudes towards wealth and it may have changed months since then, if people were wrong to be outraged about those things, if we were allowed to give more money to the parties directly, if it was sort of a situation where if osha or obama had guests coming back to the lincoln bedroom maybe they would be raffles, some small dollar donors would get to go as well as the big dollar donors. but what does it really take to a scandal that would affect things these days? >> the whole business of political money and fund raising and all that is much more out of any open than it used to be. so the baseline level of cynicism is a lot higher. when i started on this feed, campaigns do not want to talk about their fundraising.

lobbyists didn't like to talk about their lobbying and all that. and now the campaigns are bragging about how much money they raise, and the parties are bragging about it. the only people who are not bragging about our the c. fours basically. >> and some of them are bragging. >> yes. >> if not disclosing. >> so it's a lot more of it in the open. therefore, i think that the potential for scandal is greater, because it's more generally understood what's going on, you know, what the norms are. and when you go past those

norms, and i think it's easier to tell the story if a billionaire is involved and if some corporate lobbyist is involved. so maybe were on the train headed down the tracks toward the -- >> yes, and to get a more cynical, do you mind if i jump in there for even more cynicism? >> i don't need any competition. >> the laws are made by people who win, and the people who win are people who do well under the situation. they have no intent to go to washington and change the rules so that some other guy can win down the road. that's really a problem, and that's why campaign finance and ethics reform nothing happened until there was scandal. it happened with abram off in the post. that happened back in 1974, watergate. that's how we got campaign finance in the first place. so it really will take us down for there to be some sort of change. >> i'm going to say that the

capacity for scandal may be greater but the capacity to respond to scandal is less. i think back to 2000 campaigns during the primaries there was a group that popped up, i'm not remembering it's me. it was a 527 organization which was a political organization, back and it didn't have to disclose its donors. it was spending what then seemed like an unbelievable sum, which my recommended -- recollection was two to 3 million. this was during the republican primary campaign. we couldn't figure. it was i think in support of -- i can the weather was in support of john mccain or in support of george w. bush. someone else here who's got a less creaky memory than i have is going to jump in helping. >> they were attacking mccain. >> it was the wiley brothers. i'm not sure if they were attacking mccain or supporting them in favor of bush. but all of a sudden this thing

popped up on the horizon. i was an editor at the time and my reporter went out and basically just by paying on people, these wiley brothers came forward. had no responsibility to disclose this 527. within a few months congress actually passed -- mccain pushed come because back in the days when mccain cared about campaign finance reform, mccain pushed and congress passed legislation that's still on the books that requires 527 groups that are operating outside of regular political committees, to disclose their campaign spending and the nation's. that happened within the election cycle, as i recall. our capacity to respond in the same election cycle or even in anticipation of the next election cycle seems to me in response to a similar scandal to be vastly reduced. >> i probably should at this point in the st