Mr. Connaughton Goes to Washington

Dear Mr. President,

George Packer’s “Washington Man,” in this week’s New Yorker paints a grim picture of politics in America today, how we’ve gone from the myth of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to a state of corporate fascism where lobbyists write the laws, where corporate money controls every facet of government and there are no Mr. Smiths to fight for the public good—and win. In the 1980s, Jeffrey Connaughton was inspired by Joe Biden and went to Washington. Packer traces his career from campaign worker, fund-raiser, organizer, speech writer and staffer to eventually become special assistant to the White House Counsel and then chief of staff for Ted Kaufman who inherited Biden’s senate seat when he became your VP. He also chronicles Connaughton’s disillusion, his years as a lobbyist, his realization that Biden was using him as he was using Biden, what’s called a “Washington relationship.” Washington seduces and corrupts everyone, he says, in a “slow immersion in moral compromise” and Connaughton realized he too had been corrupted. He quit lobbying and joined Senator Kaufman who dedicated himself to fight for financial reform, but with 3,000 lobbyists swarming Capitol Hill, they didn’t stand a chance. They had no allies; Senator Chris Dodd had sold out to the banking industry and the committee chairmen were on his side along with your advisors and officials like Geithner and Summers; they all made sure Kaufman’s amendments, speeches and prodding of the SEC and Justice Department to prosecute Banksters went nowhere. Connaughton saw from inside, the corrupting influence of corporate money and realized that “our government has been taken over by a financial elite.” In the end nothing changed: the Dodd-Frank bill was gutted, the banks are still too big to fail, still deal in exotic investments, still defraud consumers. At the end of Kaufman’s term, Connaughton decided to leave Washington but a few days before leaving he made sure he could never return. He spoke to 300 Wall Street executives, lobbyists and lawyers at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York about fraud in the banking industry and the failure of regulators. The audience sat silent. He flew to Costa Rica and went on an 8-hour hike, returned to the hotel and took a long long shower until he finally felt clean. The conclusion one comes to is that democracy in America is defunct, that power and money are great seducers and no matter who wins, you or Mitt, nothing will change and the rest of us will lose.