Did anyone who attended the Saturday night bash on Raglan Road in Dublin featuring Bill Clinton, think there was anything odious about the event? Not that the evening wasn't splendid, the house magnificent and the hosts welcoming, but an occasion whose purpose is to subvert democracy surely caused misgivings on the part of some people? The point of the event was to raise money for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and, apparently, a quarter of a million was raised from US citizens living here, writes Vincent Browne.
Hillary Clinton is raising far more money to win the presidency than was ever raised in the history of politics. She has announced she won't bother with public funding, so as to be free to go well beyond the limits the acceptance of public funding would allow. $14 million was left from her 2006 Senate campaign, which put her away ahead of other Democratic candidates. She has said her goal is to raise a total of $60 million and she is well on the way to achieving that.
In the first three months of this year alone she raised $26 million, which compares with the mere $9 million raised by Al Gore in the first three months of that presidential election year.
Her success in raising such enormous funds is not due just to her husband, but to her willingness to accept funding from Washington lobbyists acting on behalf of powerful vested interests. She has raised more money from that quarter than has any other presidential candidate this year - Democrat or Republican.
It really is extraordinary that the media, the commentariat and indeed the general public see nothing wrong about candidates being funded from private sources. As night follows day, this is corrupt. Corrupt perhaps (but only perhaps) in the obvious sense: that there will be a pay-back time for donors, in that those with money are guaranteed clout in the political process - for only candidates who have vast funds, in American politics, at least, can succeed.
Which means, in turn, that only those whose policies win the support of the moneyed class have a chance. Everyone else, ie those who do not have the support of the moneyed class, can forget about it.
Several years ago a case was taken to the US Supreme Court that there was bias in the political system by allowing private finance to fund campaigns. In a bizarre judgment, which has never been challenged, the Supreme Court found there was a constitutional right, founded on the idea of free speech, for people to use their funds to support a political campaign.
I recall the late Tony Ryan making a similar claim: that rich people are entitled to fund particular candidates or parties as a matter of right - I think he was one of the very rich donors who helped the Progressive Democrats into being and, boy, did they enjoy their pay-back time! But surely there is an over-riding consideration which is the supposed equality of the political system, encapsulated in the sexist slogan: one man, one vote? This being the idea that we are all equal in the political process. That idea of equality is subverted by the preference parties funded by the rich enjoy. In America that subversion is comprehensive, principally because of the costs of television advertising, which is hugely powerful, and the vast sums spent on it by candidates and support groups.
The restriction on television advertising here means that private finance is less decisive, but it remains a major factor.
A piece of research by Kenneth Benoit and Michael Marsh, two political scientists in Trinity College, Dublin, entitled A Fistful of Euros: Campaign spending effects under the Single-Transferable Vote Electoral System, was quoted by the Standards in Public Office Commission recently about the effect raising the limits on campaign expenditure here would have: "If limits are increased, it will almost certainly be the case that the level of campaigning will grow in line with that increase, as will the gap between those, both individuals and parties, who are in a position to incur higher levels of expenditure and those who are not. Assuming a direct positive correlation between election spending and electoral success, as is suggested by recent published research findings."
Is it any wonder that the freedoms much celebrated in America are shibboleths? That the so-called example of democracy is a fake?
Only the rich get elected or at least only those who have the support of the rich get elected. And, predictably, the entire political process is rigged in favour of the rich.
Just look at their healthcare system, which is far more inequitable than Ireland's. According to the US census bureau, on a definition of poverty that correlates to our definition of "consistent poverty", there were 36.5 million people living in poverty in 2006. That is 12.3 per cent.
And that shocking level of poverty in the world's strongest economy is related directly to this profoundly unfair political system that was celebrated and funded on Saturday in that soiree on Raglan Road in Dublin.