Bob Schieffer Complains Money In Politics ‘Shames Us All’
On Sunday, Face the Nation moderator Bob Schieffer followed in NBC host Chuck Todd’s footsteps by predictably dragging up the tired liberal line that money is destroying American politics.
The CBS host complained that “the right to vote is our proudest possession, but the way it has become debased by money shames us all.”
Schieffer’s comments came at the end of the first half of Face the Nation where he bemoaned how “Congress hasn't done anything in years, yet these midterm elections will be the most extensive in history, just like the last one. $4 billion this time around that's billion with a B.”
Schieffer proceeded to whine that our government is in a perpetual state of inaction, failing to produce a better electoral system:
Do you think you're getting your money's worth? Better candidates, better government, I doubt that. But it does raise yet another question. Can you name a commodity or a product that gets worse and worse, that produces less and less of what it is supposed to produce yet gets more expensive? Maybe you can name one but the only thing I can think of is American politics.
The Face the Nation moderator concluded the segment by arguing that our political system has supposedly been bought and sold by private interests:
I'm not blaming it on Republicans or Democrats, I'm blaming it on Republicans and Democrats who have turned what used to be an amateur sport into a professional business where the jobs that volunteers used to do for free have been outsourced to professionals. That's also unique to politics. Outsourcing something you were getting free to someone who charge you for it.
While Schieffer didn't go as far as NBC’s Chuck Todd, who argued that money in politics was akin to the “Cold War,” it appears the CBS host likely expresses similar liberal sentiments that money is killing American democracy.
See relevant transcript below.
CBS’s Face the Nation
November 2, 2014
BOB SCHIEFFER: Here’s something to think about as you to go vote. Congress hasn't done anything in years, yet these midterm elections will be the most extensive in history, just like the last one. $4 billion this time around that's billion with a B. A small question,. Do you think you're getting your money's worth? Better candidates, better government, I doubt that.
But it does raise yet another question. Can you name a commodity or a product that gets worse and worse, that produces less and less of what it is supposed to produce yet gets more expensive? Maybe you can name one but the only thing I can think of is American politics. I'm not blaming it on Republicans or Democrats, I'm blaming it on Republicans and Democrats who have turned what used to be an amateur sport into a professional business where the jobs that volunteers used to do for free have been outsourced to professionals.
That's also unique to politics. Outsourcing something you were getting free to someone who charge you for it. And in the process winding up with an inferior product, a government that remains in permanent gridlock. The right to vote is our proudest possession, but the way it has become debased by money shames us all.
— Jeffrey Meyer is a News Analyst at the Media Research Center. Follow Jeffrey Meyer on Twitter.
