The complicated political dynamics between rich presidential candidates and poorer ones far predate the 20th century.
The wealth, or lack of it, of the presidential candidates, or potential presidential candidates, is emerging as an issue in the presidential race.
On the Democratic side of things, the matter was thrown into sharp relief by the juxtaposition of the two big news items of the weekend. First, Maureen Dowd’s New York Times column reported that Vice President Biden is taking a fresh look at whether to run. Ms. Dowd reported a conversation between Biden and his dying son in which Beau Biden said, “Dad, I know you don’t give a damn about money.” And second, Hillary and Bill Clinton reported adjusted gross income totaling about $139 million for the years 2007 through 2014, including $875,000 for four speeches to Goldman Sachs.
On the Republican side, the last 8 public polls indicate that the leading candidate is also the wealthiest one—Donald Trump, who declared his net worth to be $10 billion (Bloomberg reports the actual figure is closer to $2.9 billion). Trump is trailed by the former governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, who earned a reported $28.5 million in household adjusted gross income for 2007 through 2013; and by the governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker. Walker makes a point on the campaign trail of talking about working at McDonald’s and using coupons to shop for discounted clothing. “We didn’t inherit fame or fortune from our family,” Walker says.
Plenty of pundits predicted that economic inequality would be an issue in this presidential campaign. But most people thought the discussion would be about inequality of income and wealth among ordinary Americans, not among the presidential candidates themselves.
The wealthier the candidates are, the more eager they are to connect with the concerns of ordinary Americans. The former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, wrote recently that Trump “has tapped into America’s great populist tradition by speaking to concerns of working class voters.” She praised Trump by writing, “He may be a billionaire, but refreshingly, there’s nothing elitist about him.” Hillary Clinton, for her part, says she is running because “everyday Americans need a champion.”
There is no shortage of precedents for wealthy politicians with a common touch. John Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt often get mentioned; Reagan sometimes, too. But the complicated political dynamics between rich candidates and poorer ones, and between both and the voters, far predate the 20th century.
Samuel Adams—the sparkplug of the American Revolution, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the man who gave the order to start the Boston Tea Party, and who gave the name to the Boston Massacre—was, in relative financial terms, the Joseph Biden or Scott Walker of his day. Adams was so poor that when he went off to the Continental Congress at Philadelphia for the first time, the people of Boston had to take up a collection to buy him a new suit. “I glory in being what the World calls, a poor Man,” Adams wrote to his wife from Philadelphia on November 24, 1780.
The Donald Trump (or perhaps Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush) of that time and place was John Hancock. Hancock’s inherited shipping fortune was vast. Just as Trump affects a family coat of arms, Hancock ordered a punch bowl from China decorated with a crest of a hand and three cocks. Trump has his private jet; Hancock had a team of white horses. Adams worried that people would vote for Hancock as president of the Congress, or as governor of Massachusetts, because of his wealth.
“I hope our country will never see the time, when either riches or the want of them will be the leading considerations in the choice of public officers,” Adams wrote to Elbridge Gerry on January 2, 1776. “The giving such a preference to riches is both dishonourable and dangerous to government.”
Hancock and Adams feuded but eventually reconciled. Both eventually served as governor of Massachusetts, though Hancock was elected first, and Adams assumed the office only after Hancock’s death. Adams’ warning about the danger of preferring rich politicians was surely motivated in part by his feelings of resentment toward Hancock, who was simultaneously an ally and a rival. But it also may have stemmed from Adams’ feeling about King George III, who for all his crown jewels and castles turned out to be a ruler unwilling to respond in any meaningful way to the colonists’ opposition to taxation without representation.
Wealth can buy admiration but it can also bring isolation. Samuel Adams had a point when he cautioned against it becoming a big factor in voter decisions. We’d be better off spending less time thinking about how much money the candidates do or don’t have and more time considering how likely their policies are to help enrich or impoverish the rest of us.
by Karl Denninger
Yep
Read this folks, it’s spot-on.
His rise is not due to his supporters’ anger at government. It is a gesture of contempt for government, for the men and women in Congress, the White House, the agencies. It is precisely because people have lost their awe for the presidency that they imagine Mr. Trump as a viable president. American political establishment, take note: In the past 20 years you have turned America into a nation a third of whose people would make Donald Trump their president. Look on your wonders and despair.
Exactly.
The Beltway is full of people who deny math while at the same time preaching that it’s “settled science” that the earth is warming — and we’re the cause.
People who claim to be “fiscal conservatives” and then hand a profligate President one trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.
People who claim that we ran “only” $300 billion in deficits last year but borrowed a trillion, or $1,000 billion, in new debt last year.
People who swear to uphold The Constitution but then approve spying on every American and refuse to honor as few as four words in a sentence: shall not be infringed.
People who claim to honor life but refuse to act against an organization that is on video talking about prices for aborted baby parts — and how to manipulate the procedure to make sure you get the desired ones.
Washington has come to view the population as asleep and willing to put up literally any ignobility, theft of their money and property and oppression they can come up with — silently. They have good reason to believe: After all just two weeks after passing TARP 98% of them were returned to office.
So what does Trump really mean? We’ll find out…..
The only choice being offered -at least almost being offered as yet- it between the status quo and Trump.
So choose.
Flash/Anon
Again, if voting made a difference, it would be illegal.
Contempt is descriptive. How many of us would like to tell the H.5NIC that he is a fucking idiot? A lot.
Same for that fucking Bonner who cries at the drop of a hat. Or Harry Reed that dinosaur.
My dad used to say the politicians like to play ‘switch’. They stick one thumb in their mouth, and one up their ass. When the big wheels say ‘switch’, they ‘switch’.
If Trump can get in their faces, it would be worth the price of admission.
Being asked to elect someone to Federal Office these days is like being asked if you want a bullet to the temple or a shot of cyanide…both will do you in ….just like the politicians .
The Republicans have lost me because I am kind of a radical conservatarian. They don’t care because that doesn’t make much difference. They have also lost my wife a kind of conservative who has realized after 40 years that they are spineless corrupt lying assholes. That is really going to hurt them in 2016.
Tough choice….Dem career political scum or Rep career political scum, OR.
I’ll take Trump
I’m still ROFL about “a hand and three cocks”. Gonna be one tired-ass hand!
Don’t want to vote since you believe it is “meaningless”? OK. I get that. So accept you have one more choice. Violent resistance. That, too, is an option and, in my opinion, an inevitable outcome of our current situation. Remember that you gave up on voting when we are in the middle of Civil War II. That voting booth might look pretty damn comfortable by then, folks.
” I am against government, so elect me to it!!”
Sheople are idiots thinking the fleecing will stop if they elect wolves.
Sage, I am an old man. War and violence are’t an option for me. I fear you may be right about Civil war 2. That makes me sad for my country and fearful for my kin.
Sage- WTF? That is like saying that we keep putting money in a vending machine and every time we get no food. Time after time we are robbed. Then as we are down for the count and starvation has set in, we take a tire tool to the machine and beat the hell out of it, open it up and claim what should be ours.
Now, your statement above says that just as we are about to liberate the food from the machine and save ourselves, we would stop and say ” gee, we should go back to just putting in the money and getting nothing”. Are you serious?
Again today I will post this- If voting made any difference they would make it illegal.
The revolution will not be televised, it won’t even be announced. Trump has taken a beating in the Hispanic media and his reception on CNN is tepid. However, Patton said Americans love winners and regular politicos are looking like a bunch of saps following a shit script.
You may sit out this election. You say you have no cock in this fight. Pick a side. Right now you have 3 choices, vote Democrat, vote Republican or do a silent protest. The only way Republicans can get elected is by upsetting the apple cart. They tried the maverick and rogue shtick in ’08, nobody bought it. If the Donald goes 3rd party, that’s the time to stick it to the Democrats and drown the Republicans like the proverbial baby in the bathtub.
EL Coyote – the revolution has already happened.
Adams’ warning about the danger of preferring rich politicians was surely motivated in part by his feelings of resentment toward Hancock, who was simultaneously an ally and a rival.