Court's campaign money ruling is a red herring.

• Author: Morris, Jane Anne
• Position: Thinking Politically - Citizens United

Before running off trying to counter the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC), we ought to sort out what this decision does and does not do.

The Citizens United decision does make our democracy theme park a little worse, the way having an atomic bomb dropped on your own house would be slightly worse than having it dropped on your neighbor's. But despite dire claims that the decision is the nail in the coffin of our democracy, that it will shake the current election system to its core and so on, the case changes very little of our current situation.

Just how teensy a change it will bring can be illustrated by looking at one of the cases overruled by Citizens United: the 1990 Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce case, [1] hailed by many as a ray of hope in the morass of campaign finance reform efforts. Austin affirmed an extremely mild Michigan law [2] that essentially prevented the Michigan Chamber of Commerce (one type of nonprofit corporation) from spending general funds to support or oppose a political candidate. That law specifically defined "person" to include corporations. [3]

The Austin case accepts that money equals speech (following the Supreme Court's 1976 Buckley v. Valeo [4] decision), that corporations can spend treasury funds on initiatives and referendums, and that political action committees (PACs) using segregated funds are legal and constitutional. Austin also affirms that corporations are "persons" with constitutional rights, and that they have both First Amendment speech rights and Fourteenth Amendment equal protection rights. That such a case is regarded as the Magna Carta of campaign reform efforts must leave corporate counsel hiding their smirks.

The recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United is a gift to the right wing, all right, but not the way many pundits claim. It is a gift to the right wing because of the way that many in the mainstream media have reacted to it, in full frontal denial that it is a red herring.

Let's review where we were before the Citizens United case was decided. After the 2002 McCain-Feingold (M-F) Act [5] went into effect, the public no longer had reason to suspect that corporate lobbying, campaign contributions or corporate cash affected elected officials' votes on legislation or positions on issues. The M-F Act transformed elections into paragons of open discussion, free sharing of ideas, thoughtful parrying, and heartfelt...