by Hank Kalet, Managing Editor
Americans don’t agree on much these days, but we all seem to know things are heading in the wrong direction.
The economy is in freefall. The banking system is crumbling. The housing market has collapsed. Gas prices, while at their lowest in months, remain higher than almost any of us can tolerate.
We are fighting never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have made a point of poking Russia in the eye and have lost what little influence we had in South America. China is rising as an economic power and the American government is mistrusted around the globe like never before.
Given all of this, it is easy to see why the 2008 presidential race has been described as a “change election” and why both Democrats and Republicans are running as outsiders and mavericks.
The target? Washington and the so-called “special interests” that allegedly run the place.
”John McCain doesn’t run with the Washington herd,” vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said earlier this month in Wisconsin (MSNBC.com).
Sen. McCain, the Republican presidential standard bearer, also hit Washington hard during the same event.
”It’s over. It’s over. It’s over for the special interests,” he said. “We’re going to start working for the people of this country.”
Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, has turned his fire on special interests, as well. In a recent advertisement on education funding, he hits Sen. McCain for crafting an “economic plan (that) gives $200 billion more to special interests while taking money away from public schools.”
Let’s break this down: Both the Republicans and the Democrats oppose special interests. Both the McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden tickets are looking to shake up Washington, to change the culture in the capital so that it puts average Americans first.
That they have very different approaches to doing so, and very different definitions of what change means is not really the issue. “Change” is all that matters.
It’s a classic line of attack, setting up the establishment straw man that can then be knocked down. Jimmy Carter did it, as did Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. There is really nothing new, even if there is a bit of truth in the critique.
But the “special interest” trope is one of the most overused in political discourse, trotted out by both sides as populist shorthand — running against the “special interests” demonstrates that the candidate is looking out for the “common man” (another overused trope).
The shorthand obscures a basic fact of most campaigns — specifically, that they are funded by corporate America and various political action groups. Corporate sectors like finance, health and energy are major donors this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks the influence of money on politics.
Sen. Obama has received $24.9 million and Sen. McCain $22.1 million from the financial sector; Sen. Obama has received $9.5 million from the health sector and $1.4 million from energy businesses and Sen. McCain has received $5.1 million from the health sector and $2.8 million from energy groups. Plus, both candidates have taken about half a million dollars in contributions from the defense industry. (The disparity between the two sides is due, in part, to the length and heatedness of the Democratic primary.)
Given the money flowing in from industry — which comes, if not with explicit strings, then with the expectation of easy access to the people who make policy — I think it is fair to ask what the candidates mean by “special interests.”
The answer depends on whom you ask.
If you ask the Republicans, the “special interests” are the teachers union and unions in general, Planned Parenthood, gays and lesbians, blacks, environmentalists — all of the constituencies traditionally aligned with the Democrats.
This was on full display during the Republican convention and has been a feature of stump speeches given by both Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin since the convention ended two weeks ago.
References to “pork-barrel spenders” and Sen. Obama’s deference to “to the teachers unions instead of committing to real reform” litter his speeches.
Ask the Democrats and they answer large corporations, conservative churches and other groups generally affiliated with the GOP.
Taken together, the definition of special interest covers a rather broad swath of the American electorate. Or, to put it another way: All of us are “special interests.”
That doesn’t mean that reform is unnecessary. On the contrary, the change mantra picked up by both sides resonates because there are major flaws in the American political system. Power in Washington is concentrated in the hands of a small coterie of influential lobbyists and political advisers who rotate in and out of the official and shadow governments, helping to craft policy and determine the course of the country. Money does buy access and shape the agenda.
There is a reason that many Americans are feeling powerless. And change is necessary.
Running against Washington, therefore, is good politics. But in the larger scheme of what ails this nation at this moment in history, it is nothing more than an empty rhetorical flourish.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. His e-mail is [email protected] and his blog, Channel Surfing, can be found at www.kaletblog.com.

