For decades, America has called itself the leader of the free world. But leadership built on moral authority cannot survive when every election turns into an auction. Our democracy and our credibility have been sold to the highest bidder.
Money in politics has always been corrosive, but the scale today is staggering. In 2024, more than $17 billion was spent on federal races. Lobbying expenditures topped $4 billion. Corporate donors and political action committees don’t spend that kind of money out of generosity. They’re buying influence, writing policy, and shaping the future to suit their interests. It’s a legal form of bribery, and everyone knows it.
The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 opened the floodgates by declaring that unlimited campaign spending was a form of free speech. What it really did was legalize corruption. It gave corporations and billionaires the megaphones while ordinary voters were left to whisper. Since then, nearly every major issue, from health care, climate policy, taxation, and defense, has been filtered through the lens of who pays best.
When politicians rely on donors to stay in power, their loyalty shifts from the people to the purse. Neither party wants to give up the money. Democrats collect their checks from tech companies, Wall Street, and Hollywood. Republicans get theirs from oil, defense, and real estate. Both claim the system is broken, but both keep it alive. They’re like addicts defending their next fix.
If a foreign power wanted to destabilize us, they wouldn’t need to invade. They’d just invest. And many already have. Foreign-affiliated PACs, shell companies, and lobbyists use the same channels as domestic donors. The result is a government so compromised by money that it can barely distinguish national interest from private gain.
The damage isn’t just internal. It’s global. If I were President Xi of China, why would I ever trust an agreement with the United States? Why would I tie my nation’s future to leaders who can be bought every four years and who renege on deals when their donor base changes? How do you negotiate with a government whose commitments are written in pencil and paid for in cash?
That’s the real cost of money in politics: we have forfeited the world’s trust. Our moral authority, once our greatest export, is gone. Other nations see through the slogans. They see the pharmaceutical companies shaping our health policy, the fossil-fuel lobby rewriting our energy laws, and the defense industry profiting from endless conflict. They see a democracy that has become a marketplace.
We tell the world that democracy is the superior system, yet ours has become indistinguishable from the corruption we condemn abroad. When we criticize other nations for censorship or repression, they laugh and point to our own legalized bribery. They don’t see a shining city on a hill; they see a nation for rent.
The consequences are everywhere. Policy gridlock, public cynicism, and a loss of faith in institutions. Voter turnout hovers near historic lows. Young people, especially, no longer believe their vote matters, and they’re right to question it when billionaires can drown out millions of voices. Our foreign policy lurches from one administration to the next, driven not by principle but by whoever cut the biggest check during the last election cycle.
We need to stop pretending this is normal. It isn’t. It’s an addiction—and like any addiction, recovery starts with admitting the problem. Our politicians need an intervention.
We can start by demanding public financing of elections, strict limits on campaign spending, and an end to the revolving door between government and corporate lobbying. Transparency isn’t enough; sunlight doesn’t disinfect a wound this deep. We need systemic change that removes private wealth from public office.
The founding principle of democracy is that power belongs to the people. But right now, power belongs to whoever can afford it. That isn’t democracy, it’s dependency. And unless we break that dependency, America will never again lead the world. Because real leadership cannot be bought.