The Big Money Barrier Surrounding the White House

Our Manhattan offices are in a building that also houses the New York City Board of Elections. So this is the season when we hear above our heads the sounds of heavy objects rolling across the floor into freight elevators. The moving men have arrived -- and what they're transporting are voting machines being carted off to polling places.

It's reassuring, the sound of those big metal boxes being rolled out so we can cast our votes, but all too often in our fair city (as no doubt where you live, too) we are confronted by an end run on the part of a political elite, many of whom don't really trust what comes out of the ballot box on Election Day unless they've fixed what goes in.

For some weeks now we've watched our mayor, Mike Bloomberg, maneuver to undermine the will of the people. Once upon a time the mayor supported the rule that city officials can only serve two terms. But then someone pointed out term limits applied to him, too, and that he couldn't run for a third term. So he set out to change the rules. But instead of asking the people to vote on it in a public referendum, the mayor decided he couldn't risk his ambition on a fickle public.

So he turned first to his fellow moguls who own the city's major newspapers -- Murdoch, of the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal; Zuckerman of the Daily News, and Sulzberger of The New York Times. Then, according to the Times, with his considerable philanthropic clout -- before the financial meltdown, his worth was some $20 billion dollars -- the mayor leaned for support on the community and arts groups that depend on his charitable largesse.

Then he dodged the public referendum process by jawboning and cajoling the city council whose members, lo and behold, would also enjoy a chance at a third term just by giving the mayor what he wants.

By just about all accounts Mayor Bloomberg has been a fine mayor, and there are good people arguing that Gotham City needs his unique experience during a financial crisis that not even Batman or Spiderman can untangle. But New York said no to Rudy Giuliani when he tried to pull the third term hat trick in the aftermath of 9/11, and under other circumstances it's likely Bloomberg, too, would have been told, "No, thank you. We prefer due process."

The mayor's ploy has the odor about it of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's perennial plutocrat. But even Silvio's forebears, those Roman emperors who similarly ruled by decree, had a minion standing behind them whose sole job was to whisper, "Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal."

We tell ourselves that no one is above the law, but that seems hard for some politicians to grasp. So now we also have the spectacle of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, 84 years old, who likes to wear a tie emblazoned with the visage of that popular anti-hero, the Incredible Hulk. Convicted this week on seven counts of lying on financial disclosure forms, Stevens declared, "It's not over yet." Then off he headed back to Alaska where the state's Republican Party said voters shouldn't be denied the services of one of the country's most successful pork merchants just because he's a convicted felon.

That's the kind of argument we've always heard in Washington, and you have to wonder if Barack Obama or John McCain really think they can deliver on their promises to change that culture. Special interests are entrenched and incorrigible, and they're spending the money to keep it that way.

This year's will be the most expensive federal elections in history -- the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics estimates that the presidential and congressional candidates will spend more than $5.3 billion. Among incumbents in the House of Representatives, 79 percent of their campaign funds come from beyond their home district -- of the top 20 zip codes making those contributions, 15 are in Washington, DC, and the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs -- home base for lobbyists and lawyers, corporate PAC's, unions and other special interests whose money buys access you don't have as a citizen.