More Corporate Speech, Less Rancor

I couldn't agree more with Joe Trotter's points about corporate speech. (For a variety of other reasons, I think that we should not tax corporations either.) I'd actually go a step further: more corporate speech would be good for the political tone of the country.

Contrary to the claims of both the Campus Left and the Pat Buchanan/Black Helicopters Right, corporations as a whole can't fairly be called liberal or conservative. All of them, quite properly, want to make money above all else and this leads them to support candidates who will help them do that. Some of the causes most often supported by businesses big and smaller--lower taxes (that help them make more profits)--are conservative but others--more funding for public schools (that give them a more proficient workforce)--are "liberal."

On the most divisive issues--the ones that result in frequent protests and occasional wars--corporations almost always stay out of the fray. Even notoriously liberal Ben and Jerry's appears to have stopped giving some small sums of money it gave to Planned Parenthood. Zealously pro-life uber Catholic Tom Monaghan who founded Domino's Pizza, likewise, has been very careful to keep his work on abortion independent from the pizza chain he created. And this is probably good. Abortion is an important issue (I'm pro-life myself) but, because of its hugely divisive nature, not one that corporations should take strong positions on.

Few if any sizable corporations have been willing to associate themselves with the angry protests of either the Tea Party or the Occupy Movements. It's not because their executives may not agree with certain things being said but rather because the sheer divisiveness of the movements would be bad for the bottom line. (And, yes, certain things that Occupy Movement protesters seem to want--open borders and single payer health care--get far higher marks in a survey of big business executives than they would with the general public.)

When sets aside self-serving statements that tend to cancel each other out, a lot of what corporations want--a lot of what they argue about between themselves--is the same dollars and cents stuff that ought to concern the vital center of American politics. The world, obviously, needs lots of opinions in addition to those expressed by corporations. But more corporate speech, on balance, would be good for America.