Larry M. Bartels calls the current state of affairs is the “New Gilded Age.” Of the wealthiest Americans, 20 percent now possess 84 percent of the wealth economic pay, while the bottom 40 percent combine for a paltry of 0.3 percent.36
Likewise, the share of the top 0.1 percent of income earners has more than tripled, from 3.2 percent in 1950 to 10.9 percent in 2005. The share of wealth going to the top 1 percent of income earners has doubled over the same period, from 10.2 to 21.8 percent. However, as Bartels argues, economic inequality is only part of the problem. The other part is how politics have shaped the economy. “Partisan politics and [the] ideological convictions of political elites,” he writes, “have had a substantial impact on American economy, especially the economic fortunes of middle-class and poor people. Economic inequality is, in a substantial part, a political phenomenon.”37
Economic inequality has serious implications for the health of American democracy. One fundamental problem it raises is that of political inequality, and the associated impact on how and whether the “will of the people” shapes American policies. Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page have convincingly shown that “majority rule” does not characterize the current American political system. Indeed, the majority of the population has marginal influence over the formation and implementation of governmental policies. Real influence lies in the hands of the economic elite and organized interest groups. In their view, “Americans do enjoy many features of central to democratic governance … but if the policymaking is dominated by a powerful business organization and small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.”38 Similarly, Bartels has shown that “senators are constantly responsive to the views of affluent constituents but entirely unresponsive to those with low income.”39
Perhaps without the academic sophistication of Piketty, Gilens, and Page, or Bartels, but with acute vision nonetheless, commentators around the world observe and are critical of American income inequality. In Germany, Markus Feldenkirchen has written that the distribution of wealth is one of the main problems currently facing the United States. In his view, the gap between rich and poor is reaching alarming proportions that have no equivalent in the German case. The super-rich in the United States are “gaining influence and control over America’s politics” and are threatening American democracy. Feldenkirchen argues that the “ability to exercise political influence rises in proportion to wealth, which in turn further cements the American economic divide.”40 In a similar vein, the British newspaper, The Guardian, criticized the American political system for no longer facilitating equality and opportunity for all. An editorial underlined the significant income inequality between rich and poor, noting “since the Great Recession, the top 1 percent of families in the US have captured 52 percent of the income growth.”41
Income inequality is immediately related to the role of money in political campaigns. It reinforces, as François Vergniolle de Chantal asserts in his chapter, “the worst prejudices shared by so many French” and other around the world about the power of American economic interests in politics. French journalist Serge Halimi criticizes the US Supreme Court for removing restrictions on political donations and argues that almost all the Republican contenders for the presidential nomination had the support of a billionaire. In his view, the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson have become the patron saints of the Republican Party. Halimi suggests that the super-rich can impose policy perspectives on politicians, writing that it is no coincidence that Adelson argued that the United States should attack Iran with nuclear weapons and that during the primary all Republican candidates declared that they were against a US-Iran deal.42 The British author Timothy Garton Ash, writing in the Spanish newspaper El País, argues that the overwhelming presence of money in American political campaigns is nothing new. What is new, in his opinion, is the “dimension and the lack of spending controls.” He writes, “Observing US policy today is to see money in action.”43 The French philosopher Michael Onfray has declared that President Trump the “doll of American capitalism” and that all American presidents are “simply toys in the hand of Capital.”44
Americans spent $6.8 billion during the 2016 elections; $2.65 billion was spent on the presidential race alone. Multimillionaire donors such as Tom Steyer and Miriam and Sheldon Adelson contributed millions of dollars to the presidential campaign.45 The Trump campaign spent much less money than the Clinton campaign (due to the fact, among other things, that he had a lot of free press coverage), demonstrating that under certain circumstances, money is not the ultimate decider of who wins an election. Yet as political scientist Marian Currinder put it, “none of this negates the fact that our finance laws at least give wealthy donors the option to inject millions into elections if they so choose.”46 People around the world see income inequality and the overwhelming presence of money in politics as a corrupting influence in American politics.
THE MASS MEDIA AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
An issue closely associated with the perceived decline of American democracy is the role of the media in electoral campaigns and American political life. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, political scientists such as Walter Dean Burnham observed that one of the main characteristics of the post-1970s American political system was the emergence of the media as organizer of political campaigns.47 According to Burnham, the activities of the media are better described by what Sidney Blumenthal called “the permanent campaign.”48 Under this system, campaigning and governing are no longer two separate moments in American politics. Campaigning is the permanent activity of the President, even when he is governing. Donald Trump exemplifies “the permanent campaign.” As President, he often energizes his base in campaign-style rallies, addressing his supporters as if he were campaigning, seeking their approval and consolidating their support.
For decades, the mass media, especially television, has played an important role in US politics. Since the first televised presidential debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, candidates have used TV as their main instrument for sending messages and attract voters. Today, however, TV has a rival: social media. Twenty years ago, Marion R. Just declared that the “World Wide Web exhibited more potential than impact during the 1996 campaign.”49 Two decades later, the power of social media is no longer in question. Donald Trump became the wizard of social media, tweeting his message directly to the American voters. “Today,” asserted Joe Keohane in 2016, “@realDonaldTrump [has the] force of newsmaker, an agitator, an American political phenomenon that combines the highest profile of a presidential candidate with the reach and velocity of social media. It has more than 7.5 million followers. It [his twitter account] has tweeted more than 31,000 times.”50 A Spanish journalist went even further, declaring that Trump “promotes great initiatives through social networks as if the United States were living in a twitterocracy.”51