In the movie adaptation of their book, All the President's
Men, "Follow the money" was the succinct advice given to
Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
by their secret source Deep Throat as they struggled four
decades ago to get to the bottom of the Watergate burglary.
The scandal ultimately brought down the presidency of
Richard Nixon.
Deep Throat's three words are even truer today; money
remains at the root of corruption in government and
politics. Efforts to reform campaign finance in the decades
since Watergate have been upended, unleashing torrents of
cash from undisclosed sources.
Following the money is journalist Matea Gold's beat. A
political reporter in the Washington bureau of the Los
Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, she says the story
of the 2012 elections was the dark money spent to influence
the outcome. Moyers & Company senior writer Michael
Winship spoke with her at last week's Lessons of Watergate
conference, organized by the citizen's lobby Common
Cause.
transcript
Michael Winship: When I first met you, you were actually
covering media in New York, and then you came down here and
you've been covering money in politics.
Matea Gold: Correct.
Michael Winship: How was that transition for you? How did
that work?
Matea Gold: Well, I had covered the 2000 and the 2004
presidential campaigns, so it was actually fun to get back
into the political world and to do it through money and
politics was kind of happenstance. They needed some more
folks on that beat and so I jumped in, and it ended up
being I think really one of the best political beats for
the last few cycles.
Michael Winship: What was the biggest difference to you
from covering the elections in 2000, 2004, what were the
surprises for you now?
Matea Gold: Well, the pace was just immensely different. I
was really lucky to do it before Twitter. I can't really
imagine what it was like for my poor colleagues on the
campaign trail after they had to tweet every utterance of
the candidates. So I think we had a lot more time to
ruminate, and even though we were filing blog posts in
2004, we still had more time to think about, you know, kind
of ponder what the candidates were saying and try to do
some more analytical pieces. So the pace is immensely
different. And I think in a lot of ways it's just a lot
harder to cover the full story from the trail now, because
so much of the action has really moved to a lot of these
outside groups that are playing in the campaigns. It's such
an intensive paper trail to follow that it's really, really
enormously difficult to get people to spill the beans and
shed any light on what's happening in a lot of these
outside groups. And when you cover other beats usually you
manage to work up some good sources and you have some
people who provide you guidance and some intel
occasionally, and here we're really going blind, and while
it's been fascinating to really do these deep dives into
990 documents and corporate registries all over the
country, it's limiting, and so I do think it's hard to make
the stories human and real without really getting at some
of the people involved. So that's really definitely been a
challenge.
Michael Winship: What about the money? I mean that must be
an enormous difference as well, the amount of money in
politics now.
Matea Gold: Sure, and so President Obama really changed
that singlehandedly when he went outside the public finance
system in 2008, decided not to take matching federal funds
in the general election, which meant he could raise and
spend unlimited amounts. And so John McCain chose not to do
that and was really fighting with one arm tied behind his
back, and I think after that it was inevitable that the
public financing system really would end as we knew it for
general elections. And so that was a huge change that
occurred in 2008, and I think in a lot of ways ushered in
this era we're seeing of just this incredible inflationary
spending, in especially the presidential campaigns. But
obviously, then two years later Citizens United occurred
and the Supreme Court decided that corporations could spend
unlimited sums of money independently, and there as another
federal court decision that followed that that really led
to the creation of what we now call super PACs. And so it's
really turned into what a lot of campaign finance lawyers
call the "wild, wild west" now, and a lot of the kind of
limits and transparency that we saw put in place after
Watergate have been upended in the process.
Michael Winship: How much money are we talking about?
Matea Gold: Well, the Center for Responsive Politics came
out with their best calculation for the 2012 race and it
was $6.3 billion. And that's a really rough estimate
because a lot of these outside groups are formed as
501(c)(4), so-called nonprofit social welfare organizations
that don't report their spending and they don't report
their donors. And so possibly hundreds of millions of
dollars more were spent trying to influence the
presidential campaign that we have no way to account
for.
Michael Winship: Trevor Potter today, from the Campaign
Legal Center, referred to the 501(c)(4)s as "pirate flags
of convenience."
Matea Gold: [laughs] Yeah. I think that, you know, there
was a real focus on super PACs after the 2010 races and
after 2012, but I think the real story is with their kind
of dark box cousin, which are these (c)(4)s that offer the
same kind of freedom to spend and raise these unlimited
sums without the transparency. And President Obama has now
embraced a group like that to advocate on behalf of his
second term agenda, so I think that is a real turning point
in our politics.
Michael Winship: You were covering that story yesterday, I
believe.
Matea Gold: I was, yes.
Michael Winship: What was that about?
Matea Gold: So last night President Obama spent two hours
with supporters of this new organization, which I think was
incredibly symbolic. It really underscored how Organizing
for Action is going to play an unprecedented role. It's an
outside arm of the presidency, of the White House, that
will be advocating on his behalf, outside of the bounds of
the campaign finance system and it will be fascinating to
see how that plays out and what kind of influence it
has.
Michael Winship: So he kept the initials, OFA.
Matea Gold: [laughs] Makes it more convenient, makes it
easier for people to remember. In fact, he and others refer
to it as "OFA 4.0." If you recall, there was his first
Obama for America race in 2008, and then they tried to roll
that into something called Organizing for America, and that
was his attempt after that campaign to keep the grassroots
engaged. But it was set up within the confines of the
Democratic National Committee, and so I think had a lot
more limitations on how flexible it could be and really the
kind of campaigns it did, and a lot of activists felt
really removed from its efforts. So then came OFA 3.0,
which was the 2012 race, and now we're in the fourth
incarnation.
Michael Winship: So Obama has gone from someone who
supported campaign finance reform and supported public
financing of campaigns and so forth and now seems to have
come completely around the other way. And somebody was
talking earlier today about the fact that one of the
problems with the campaign finance reform movement is that
once somebody gets into office, having gone through this
awful process - you know, what we're talking about, I think
the FEC figure this week was senators having to raise
$14,000 a day to hold onto a senate seat, that once they
get in, the impetus for the campaign finance reform seems
to fade.
Matea Gold: There's no question that I think President
Obama has dropped at least his rhetoric and the frequency
with which he has decried the system. This was a
fundamental plank that he originally ran for when he first
launched his presidential bid in 2007, to change the way
Washington works, to elevate the role of the average
American against the special interests. And I think he did
encounter a system that was much more difficult to
transform than he thought, and critics say he also has not
put a lot of energy into trying to fix it. I mean he did
usher in, in a lot of ways, this big money climate that we
have, as I said, by going outside the public financing
system to begin with. And despite the fact that he
criticized the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United,
the White House has not put a lot of political muscle
behind trying to push for campaign finance reforms on
Capitol Hill, including disclosure efforts that a lot of
folks believe would at least shine a light on who is
spending this money. And so there's an incredible amount of
disillusionment I think in the campaign finance reform
community about this, and I think a certain amount of irony
that a president who came into office really running on
this platform has overseen such a return of big money into
our system.
Michael Winship: Well, it's interesting, we're here at a
conference that Common Cause held that's marking the 40th
anniversary of Watergate, and there was this great impetus
for campaign finance reform. And it was already eroding
before Citizens United. What do you think happened?
Matea Gold: Well, Watergate was this incredibly
all-encompassing scandal that I think gave so much power to
the reform movement at the time that we just haven't had
anything comparable since. There's been plenty of other
scandals in the wake of that, but nothing that really
encompassed the presidency. And there is an incredible
amount of pushback from folks who believe that there should
be unlimited amounts of money in the system, that that
equals speech, and so there's a real ideological drive, and
I think folks have put a lot of money into trying to
overturn a lot of these measures, and as something like
Watergate fades from the public consciousness, I think it's
harder for the advocates of reform to really make the case
why these things are so essential. So a lot of critics who
believe there needs to be really more disclosure and
stricter rules now are saying that what we have now is a
system in which, you know, it's a scandal waiting to
happen, and so perhaps the next big controversy will
generate calls for more reform, but for now the pendulum
definitely seems to be swinging towards a loosening of the
rules.
Michael Winship: Well, John McCain, of McCain-Feingold
fame, has been saying steadily it's going to take another
Watergate scandal, or worse, to get reform back. And some
argue that the scandal's already here, it's just more
diffuse.
Matea Gold: And it's harder to explain its import and its
impact, I think, to people. It feels - you know, the
American public in some ways is so cynical now about the
role of money in politics that telling them that some
special interest is trying to influence a member of
Congress, or even the administration, through donations
seems like, you know, every day in Washington. So it's very
hard to kind of gin up outrage over that. So our challenge
as reporters is to continue to try to make a connection
between the people who are trying to influence the process
and the outcome so the public can really decide for
themselves if that's the way they want the system to work.
But that's not always easy to do.
Michael Winship: Do you think that reform is possible when
there's just so damn much money?
Matea Gold: I would not purport to be an expert on whether
that movement is going to get another victory or not. I do
think that there are - in some ways, like everything else
in American politics, the issue of campaign finance is more
polarized than ever before. I mean really in the wake of
Watergate, you had a lot of people on both sides of the
aisle calling for reform, and in fact, Republicans really
embraced disclosure and that was something that was a
rallying cry on the right, that, you know, all we really
need is sunshine and you don't need limits on donations,
but if everybody knows where the money's coming from this
is all kosher and we can be confident that we know who's
trying to influence the process. Now disclosure is verbatim
(verboten) in conservative circles and that's something
that they are really fighting against. So that deepening
polarization that has occurred in kind of every ideological
battle has really impacted this conversation as well.
Michael Winship: You've written a lot, too, about the role
of campaign consultants in all this.
Matea Gold: Sure.
Michael Winship: That it's become such a huge industry as a
result of all this. Is that sort of impacting and being
impacted?
Matea Gold: Well, there's no question there are people who
are profiting generously from this situation, and I've been
very amused to watch the new super PAC filings just since
Election Day. You know, there's dozens of super PACs that
have cropped up, some of which have no intention of
actually participating in the process but probably just are
hoping to take advantage of some poor donors who think
Americans for Apple Pie is going to do good in their
community. I believe there's already three Hilary Clinton
super PACs that are vying to occupy that space. So, yes,
there's a political industrial complex that definitely
furthers this whole world.
Michael Winship: And you talked too, yesterday, about the
Center to Protect Patients' Rights as being a classic
example of one of these. Is it a (c)(4)?
Matea Gold: Well, it's a (c)(4), and it's actually
something that's kind of an interesting new phenomena,
which are these pass through organizations, in an effort to
evade disclosure - apparently; we don't really know the
motivation. But whoever is behind the curtain has been
setting up pass through organizations in which donations
are funneled from one group with kind of anodyne name to,
you know, 12 other groups. So there could be tax reasons
for doing that, and there also could be just an effort to
create kind of a double blind, so if there is a push for
disclosure on one level you kind of run into a wall to find
out who the original source is. And that's exactly what
happened in California this year when a group donated $11
million to influence ballot initiatives, and when
California regulators tried to follow the trail back they
ran into three different (c)(4)s that had been kind of the
daisy chain of sources but never the original donor.
Michael Winship: Turning a corner here, with media
consolidation now and cutbacks in salaries and time, and
just shoe leather and people being able to cover the
stories, do you think that we could cover Watergate today?
I mean do we have the capacity to cover a scandal of that
level? Do we have the will to do it?
Matea Gold: Right. I actually think there's an enormous
appetite in this town for controversy, so I have no doubt
that there's plenty of journalists that would rush to a
story of that significance. The question is who has the
resources to do the kind of dogged reporting to get behind
kind of the flashier one-day scoops. And I mean our
industry has changed so radically and there are fewer
voices, there are fewer reporters on the beat, but there
also are all of these new media organizations, online
organizations that have sprung up, and so in some ways it's
more competitive, but it's almost more competitive for kind
of the initial scoop, and there are fewer and fewer people
doing the deep dives and the long reads, and that's where I
think some of the most essential journalism occurs.
Michael Winship: Is it too fragmented? I mean there's so
many sources of information now. You know, when I was here
during Watergate, you had the Washington Post, Washington
Star. I did some writing for the Washington Star. There
were three networks, public television, maybe a couple of
other stations. And now with the Internet and everything
else there's just so many sources of information without a
lot of analysis. I wonder sometimes if we aren't too
afflicted with cognitive dissonance and a short attention
span to really understand.
Matea Gold: I'm sure that's true. I think competition is
great. My concern is I think that people now are
personalizing their news sources in a way that they don't
necessarily encounter stories that are naturally ones that
they would gravitate towards on their own. So if you're not
picking up a newspaper and having that serendipitous
encounter with a story that you just wouldn't have looked
for, you're really missing out on a big part of the world.
And so by just getting our news through whatever the
headlines are on Google and Yahoo, and as those become
increasingly more personalized for those users, I think the
risk we face is becoming more and more compartmentalized as
a society, that there'll be a certain segment of people
that follow X topic and a certain segment of people that
follow Y, and never the twain shall meet. So that is really
the hard thing for us as kind of a mainstream news
organization trying to reach everybody.
Michael Winship: Is the public worn out, do you think? I
mean you talk about people being really enthusiastic about
the big scoop here in D.C., but beyond the District, I mean
are people sort of worn out by all this?
Matea Gold: Well, I'd have to say, I worry, covering the
money in politics beat, that I'm just contributing to the
overall cynicism that our readers have about the way this
town works, and that it'll actually just kind of turn them
off and at a certain point. I do get a lot of feedback from
readers that seem really engaged in this story, but I think
for a lot of folks this is just business as usual. So I
don't know how much of a disconnect there is, but I'm sure
there's a pretty substantial one, and so that makes it even
more essential for us to try to drive these stories home in
a real way that affects people's lives. If we're doing a
story about moneyed interests trying to influence policy,
make it clear how that affects people at home. And that's
not easy to do.
Michael Winship: There's been a certain sub-current at this
conference and some talk about whether or not the press is
as willing to go after Obama as they have been past
presidents. Do you sense any difference at all?
Matea Gold: You know, I wasn't in Washington covering
previous administrations, but I don't sense any reluctance
among my colleagues to cast a critical eye on this
administration. If anything, I think that there's probably
in some ways a worse relationship between this White House
press corps and this administration than past
administrations. So I just think that -
Michael Winship: Why is that?
Matea Gold: Well, it's a much more closed-off White House.
The president has made himself available for much fewer
question-and-answer sessions. He hasn't sat down with a
newspaper reporter for ages. And this White House has
become incredibly adept at managing the message, and they
control the message themselves and they distribute the
message on Facebook and Twitter and really bypass the press
corps. And, you know, kudos to them for figuring that out,
that they don't need us, but I do think that the lack of
access makes it harder in some ways for a modern day White
House reporter to cover the White House.
Michael Winship: And what about Congress?
Matea Gold: I think Congress is still a terrific place to
find great stories, and there is an accessibility there
that you can't find down the other end of town on
Pennsylvania Avenue. And, you know, there still is a lot of
efforts to try to frame the story and spin the story, but
you as a reporter can just walk around and run into a
member of Congress and chat them up, so I think that's
great.
Michael Winship: Finally, just circling back to campaign
finance for a minute, you talked yesterday about what's
happening on the state level and local level, so if you
could talk a little bit about that in terms of campaign
finance.
Matea Gold: Sure. I think one of the most fascinating
developments for those of us campaign finance geeks that
are following every in and out is that, while at a federal
level there's a bit of paralysis in terms of trying to
uncover who some of these players are that are pouring
money into (c)(4)s, state regulators are being very
aggressive about going after them. It's probably not a
coincidence this is happening in majority Democratic states
with Democratic AGs, but it's not exclusively New York and
California. So I wrote about Idaho, for example, where they
really pushed to uncover the donors behind a ballot
initiative on education reform, and lo and behold, it was
Michael Bloomberg. So there are a lot of efforts to peel
back the curtain that are happening at the state level, and
I think that that's going to be really a place to watch, if
you're interested in the disclosure fight.
Michael Winship: Matea Gold, thank you very much.
Matea Gold: It was my pleasure, thanks for having me.
