Corporatization of Politics

The timeline of the far-right conservative movement, to which Mayer has dedicated this book, can also be seen as the timeline of the corporatization of American politics, a process for which the Kochs can both take credit and be thankful. A political takeover by an ideology that was seen as a fringe ideology thirty years prior could not have taken place in a traditional democratic political system, but instead required the electorate, academia, and political analysts alike to regard running a government with the efficiency of a business as a beneficial thing.

At its core, a representative democracy is supposed to be run by officials elected by the constituency who vow to truly represent the constituency’s concerns on the national stage. By this standard, it is nearly impossible for a group of wealthy special interests to rise too far, because their interests simply do not...