FCC Chief Tom Wheeler Is Five Sixths of a Superhero

[Commentary] The last best hope to stop Big Money's rout of American democracy is a former trade group lobbyist who's reluctant to stretch his spandex superhero suit too thin.

The Federal Communication Commission already possesses the power to rescue us from dark money. Tomorrow morning, says Michael J. Copps, who was a FCC commissioner for 10 years, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler could say: We have had on the books since the original Telecommunications Act of 1934 a requirement that the sponsors of ads, including political ads, must be identified, and we're going to start enforcing it. We don't have to wait for the President to send a disclosure bill to Congress that won't go anywhere; we don't have to wait for Congress to bite the hand that feeds it. The FCC can do that rulemaking on its own, and after a 120-day public comment period, if you conceal who's paying for those ads, you'll get nailed. Enforcing that provision is "at the top of my bucket list," says Copps, "and I'm looking for company, Tom." "Maybe you have noticed," he said a couple of weeks ago, when asked if the FCC will use the authority it already has to require disclosure of the secret sponsors of political ads, "we have a long list of telecommunications-related decisions that we are dealing with right now, and that will be our focus." He punted to the Hill: "Well, if the Congress acts, then we will clearly follow the mandate of Congress." But as he had to know, just two days before he said that, the House Communications and Technology subcommittee, on a party-line vote, shot down a law that would have forced dark money into the light. Five out of six ain't bad. But net neutrality, privacy and the other issues on Wheeler's plate, important as they are, won't rescue democracy from the rot of corruption. Maybe another outpouring of public outrage can get him to reach for the spandex one more time. Paging John Oliver?

[Kaplan is a USC Annenberg professor and director of the Norman Lear Center]