Voices
GARY
HART
HUFFINGTON
06.24.12
Legalizing
Watergate
WHO WOULD HAVE thought, forty years after the greatest political
scandal and presidential abuse of
power in U.S. history, that the Supreme Court of the United States
would rule that the practices that
fueled and financed that scandal
were now legal?
Yet that is essentially the effect
of the Citizens United decision. Go
ahead and take bets on how much
time will pass before the tsunami
of cash unleashed by Citizens
United ends up in the pockets of
a Watergate-like cast of break-in
burglars, wiretap experts, surveillance magicians and cyberpunks.
Given the power and money at
stake in the nation’s elections, it is
inevitable that candidates or their
operatives will tap into the hundreds of millions of dollars flowing
through their campaigns and try
to game the system — in perfectly
ILLUSTRATION BY MARTIN O’NEILL
legal or highly illegal ways.
And, of course, the ultimate victims of the corruption of the Democratic process are not defeated
c