In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama roundly criticized the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, arguing that it had “reversed a century of law.” That practically sounds like a hymn of praise compared to what Senator John McCain had to say on “Meet the Press” this weekend. He called Citizens United: “arrogant, uninformed, naïve.”
Those three words nicely sum up the decision that gutted the McCain-Feingold campaign reform act, and did away with restrictions on independent political expenditures by corporations and unions. Citizens United, along
with lower court rulings that rely on it, led to the super PAC freak show that is the 2012 election.
Mr. McCain — who used to talk a lot of sense before he ran for president in 2008– was responding to a question from David Gregory, the program’s host, about
Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire who bankrolled Newt Gingrich’s dark-comedy run for the G.O.P. nomination through a super PAC, and is now promising to spend tens of millions more to elect Mitt Romney.
Mr. Gregory noted that Mr. Adelson gets some of his billions from casino holdings in Macau and wondered if Mr. McCain thought his donations might amount to foreign money, which is still banned from campaigns – in theory anyway.
“I think there will be scandals associated with the worst decision of the United States Supreme Court in the 21st century,” he said. Referring to the justices on the Court, he added, “I just wish one of them had run for county sheriff.”
I get his point—if the justices had firsthand experience with elections, they might have realized the dangers inherent to flooding the system with money. But I have to disagree. I really don’t want to live in a county where either Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas has a gun and a badge.