US Supreme Court: We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Level Playing Field

A “level playing field” is generally considered a good thing. In sports, it means that a team wins because it has more skill, not because the other team had to run uphill all game. It’s also used metaphorically; in the game of life, in business or employment, access to education or elected office, a “level playing field” means that everyone has equal access and opportunity. There are no hidden, unfair advantages, no way to rig the game.

It’s a popular promise made by politicians, to level the field, and it sounds sort of American. After all we call ourselves the “Land of Opportunity.”

But the US Supreme Court said this week that they don’t care about level playing fields when it comes to elections. Ruling in a predictable 5-4 split, they rejected the current dollar limits on what an individual can donate to a candidate. They reaffirmed previous rulings that money is a form of free speech, protected by the First Amendment; to give someone money is a form of self-expression. To restrict what people can give to candidates denies free speech.

If Sheldon Adelson, billionaire gambling mogul and pro-Israel fanatic, wants to give Newt Gingrich $15 million and then Mitt Romney $30 million, as he did last election, he is just exercising his free speech rights. Last weekend every possible Republican candidate went to Las Vegas to bow down and worship Adelson, not because he might write them a check, but to give him a chance to exercise the First Amendment.

“The Court therefore found no merit in arguments calling for a level playing field or evening the financial resources available to candidates. The five justices voting in the majority put it this way: ‘The First Amendment prohibits such legislative attempts to “fine-tune” the electoral process, no matter how well intentioned.’”

That’s from Forbes Magazine’s analysis of the ruling, not The Daily Worker. The business community can get out their checkbooks along with everyone else.

(Another depressing thought: these Republican appointed justices are going to be around for a long time; they are relatively young. All the women – three! - voted in the minority. But Bush left us the gift that keeps on giving; these guys will be ruling, I guess you call it “making” rulings, but it feels like ruling, for decades to come.)

I wrote about sports last week. Maybe that’s why I noticed the phrase “level the playing field” in so many reports about the Supreme Court decision (and what it didn’t do.) Like a lot of sports analogies and sports phrases in our language, it’s colorful, but doesn’t quite make sense. I mean don’t most teams change sides at the half, so if there were a better or worse side it would be shared?

I went to high school in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, and our playing field was anything but level. It was the bottom section of the ski slope (yes, skiing was one of our sports.) I played wing, both in soccer and field hockey, same field. But we didn’t call the position left or right wing. We called it uphill or downhill wing. But it changed at half time. I wasn’t very good, and lots of balls sailed on down the hill to the far away creek. A level field would have made my job a lot easier.

Sports teams have surely wanted level playing fields since the days of the Caveman League. But surprisingly the phrase has only been used metaphorically since 1977, when a business journal quoted a lobbyist for the US Banking Association to the effect that competition between banks was great, as long as the playing field was level.

Now it seems like every pundit, politician and president promotes level fields. President Obama uses the image a lot as an argument for various social programs. (Another favorite image is the “social safety net” which I think refers to another crazy sport, tightrope walking. Perhaps more accurate; life for the poor and disenfranchised is like a terrifying tightrope, not a soccer match. Don’t make people live that life without a net.)

During the last election Mitt Romney criticized Obama’s use of the level field image, accusing Obama of wanting, not equal opportunity, but equal outcomes for that dreaded 45%, the moochers and takers. Romney raised a specter of a society where “everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort or willingness to take risk.” In a match between the makers and the takers, that socialist Obama would, according to Romney, just give the takers the trophy before the game even started.

It’s the myth cherished by the entitled, that “good sportsmanship” is all that’s needed, some effort and risk, but that equal access to the field is just not an issue. To slightly change the metaphor, if Obama has tried to unlock the doors to the big stadium filled with jobs and education, the justices keep putting up signs that say “private property” when it comes to where folks can play. Fields don’t need to be level and it would be even better if there were in private clubs where the 99% can be left out.

Paul Krugman had a good column in the NY Times a couple years ago about how uneven the playing field is in the US.

Americans are much more likely than citizens of other nations to believe that they live in a meritocracy. But this self-image is a fantasy: as a report in The Times last week pointed out, America actually stands out as the advanced country in which it matters most who your parents were, the country in which those born on one of society’s lower rungs have the least chance of climbing to the top or even to the middle.

And if you ask why America is more class-bound in practice than the rest of the Western world, a large part of the reason is that our government falls down on the job of creating equal opportunity.

Last vaguely sports related metaphor about economic justice. I first heard it from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank. “Don’t believe that old promise that a rising tide lifts all boats. Not if like most people, you don’t have a boat. The tide will drown you on shore.”

Copyright © 2014 Deborah Streeter