Dartagnan has written an important diary currently sliding down the Rec List featuring a post by Simon Head in the New York Review of Books blog section, entitled “The Clinton System.” In this post, Head pulls together many threads of reporting on Bill and Hillary Clinton’s relationship with donor networks and big corporations, to paint a bigger picture of how they became so wealthy, how much money has sluiced into their campaign war chests, how the donors to campaigns and the Clinton foundation seem to have an inexhaustible appetite for hearing the Clintons speak, and how important favors seem to magically appear around these donors. Dartagnan’s diary does an excellent job of reviewing this post, and I will not discuss it in detail today. The larger issue the post raises is today’s topic.
The Clinton Family Business
Hillary Clinton told Diane Sawyer in a 2014 interview that she and Bill left the White House “dead broke:”
You have no reason to remember, but we came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt," Clinton said. "We had no money when we got there, and we struggled to piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea's education. It was not easy. Bill has worked really hard. And it's been amazing to me. He's worked very hard.
Bill did indeed work very hard. So did Hillary. While Clinton’s laughable assertion that she and her husband were “dead broke” may not have been strictly true, it is undeniable that both have become fabulously wealthy in the fifteen years since they left the White House. The most recent reports have the two of them worth $111 million. Where did this fortune come from?
Neither Clinton has won the Powerball jackpot. Nor have they invented a killer app. Instead, as the Simon Head piece shows, both Clintons have worked very hard at the family business of industrial scale graft and influence peddling. Big corporations pay both of them lots of money in "speaking fees,” but anybody with three brain cells to rub together knows that when a politician is accepting a six figure check from a big bank or corporation, they’re not being paid to speak. They're being paid to listen. The results of that remunerative practice are well illustrated by Head.
The Clinton foundation has many of the same big corporate and financial donors as the Clinton campaigns and super PACs as well. The opacity of its finances were a significant issue in the 2008 campaign, and opening the books to some degree was a condition of Clinton being named Secretary of State in 2009. This reluctantly bestowed peek inside its finances did not prevent at least the appearance of conflict of interest, however, as Head’s piece also illustrates.
The success of the Clinton’s business model is dependent on maintaining power to wield and influence to peddle. After Bill’s second term ended, it fell to Hillary to perform this task. A house in Westchester County was procured by the “dead broke” couple. A path magically appeared for Hillary to step into a Senate seat from New York (a state no doubt chosen entirely at random). Loud chatter about Hillary as a probable future presidential candidate soon started, and has never let up since. She thought she had the Oval Office in sight in 2008, with plenty of Wall Street’s money — excuse me, her constituents’ money — behind her, but she failed when it turned out Wall Street had more than one donkey in the race. But Hillary, never one to give up, landed the Secretary of State position. After leaving that sinecure to top up the family’s flagging fortune, she assumed the role of Future President in Waiting, to the full blare of trumpets heralding her inevitability. In this way, she has been able to maintain the power and influence the family business requires. And Bill has taken full advantage of it. Hillary Clinton’s ongoing quest for the Presidency is central to this business model. Her candidacy is in this sense their livelihood.
America, Inc.
Bill and Hillary Clinton are not unique to the world of corruption, of course. The American Republic has been awash in corruption since the Constitution first permitted only white men of property the franchise. Corruption has been the default state of our governing system, and the inventors of our republic recognized the reality and the danger going forward (while themselves benefiting from it, of course.) Today we are functionally an oligarchy, with the Democratic and Republican parties acting as divisions in the Governmental Affairs Department of America, Inc.
Corruption has been reduced and partially beaten back in our history from time to time. The Progressive movement of the last century was in large part a reaction to the shameless corruption of the post-Civil War political world. Both Roosevelt presidencies worked in many ways to reduce this corruption. Nowadays, though, the New Deal Democratic party is as dead as the Whigs. Our latter-day version is one more vehicle of corporate influence: the Goldman Division, as it were. We are locked in phony battle with the Koch Division for spectacles of Potemkin democracy, which offer choices that cost the owners of this country nothing and usually improve their quarterly numbers. Nothing can be done anymore that doesn't pay off billionaire sponsors first and last. Social wedge issues are used by both parties to keep their partisans cheering, but these issues have negligible cost to the sponsors of the contest.
A corrupt political system is of the money, by the money, and for the money. It necessarily disenfranchises average voters who cannot write big checks and fund shadowy election buying rackets. The poor voter turnout and widespread cynicism about politics this country experiences are a symptom of this systematic disenfranchisement. People are not as stupid as political “experts” think, although many of them are plenty stupid nonetheless. It is the job of the court stenographers in the media to keep them that way.
In this system the Clintons are enthusiastic and talented participants, but not originators. The Republican party has long been nothing but a vehicle for the wielding of billionaire power, to the extent that they’re no longer embarrassed by it. The Koch brothers can hold what amounts to a slave auction of Presidential aspirants in their “secret” Palm Springs konclaves, where the eager participants jump and dance and show their teeth to the appreciative gaze of the prospective buyers. The Clintons’ main contribution to the system has been, as founders of the DLC, to help complete the not-so-hostile takeover of the Democratic party by its current owners.
2016
So we arrive at the present. Hillary Clinton is ready to assume the throne, having proclaimed to all that she is the favorite of all the quality sort; that the party’s owners, uh, big donors are all behind her; and that the hoi polloi will enjoy the bread and circuses she will provide. The courtiers in the media sing her praises and scramble for favor. The chamberlains and viziers and chancellors have been carefully chosen to ensure that the reign will smile on those footing the bill for the coronation. All the well-heeled residents of the imperial capital agree that it must be so. How can it be otherwise?
We are told by all the Very Serious People that this is the way things must be done. We must accept the owners’ largesse with gratitude and loyalty, lest the Bad People and their owners (often the same owners, of course) usurp the throne and cast us into the pit of eternal fire. What choice do we have? It’s the system, and we can’t change it. Resistance is futile.
Oddly, though, the hoi polloi are restless. Bread is increasingly hard to come by, and the circuses no longer entertain. The solemn incantations of party orthodoxy no longer serve to keep the masses docile and quiet, as heresies abound and apostates multiply. Why won’t people just shut up and cheer, and let their betters handle things? It is very perplexing.
The most important lesson the 2016 campaign teaches so far is that people are fed up with the status quo, and are no longer willing to listen to the establishment’s opinion shapers telling them the way things are supposed to be. They are increasingly believing their lying eyes. Republican voters are growing tired of the slave auction acquisitions leading them around by the nose. Democratic voters are less worldly wise, so far. But the plurality of voters, who choose to associate with neither party and are sick to death of the show, they are in large part more aware than either. People in general are increasingly unwilling to accept the arguments for the status quo, the preemptive capitulation to the power of money, the reality of oligarchy.
Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders derive much of the power driving their candidacies from this rebellious mood. They speak different languages to different audiences, but the subtext of their appeal is similar in this respect. Throw the Bums Out is a much more potent argument this year than More of the Same. And people are increasingly wise to the game power plays, in which bums are thrown out to be replaced by more bums. The crowd response to the traditional argument “You have to fight fire with fire” is “Fuck that shit!”
Hillary Clinton and her backers explicitly believe that in this Citizens United world, the best way to fight corrupt money in politics on the Republican side is with more corrupt money on the Democratic side. How else can we win? Actually, fighting fire with fire only creates a lot more ashes. The best way to fight fire is with water. The best way to fight corrupt money in politics is not more corrupt money in politics. The best way is to make corrupt money poison to any politician accepting it. That means weaponizing corruption as a political issue, and taking advantage of the anger in the country at politics.
This seemingly obvious point has been ignored because of the fact that in order to wield the weapon of corruption as an issue, you have to be perceived as not tainted by it yourself. This requirement has left it unused in our political culture. Bernie Sanders is one of the very few politicians in national politics who has not been generally corrupted by Washington. Just like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, he swam through a river of shit and came out clean. Bernie can wield the weapon of corruption, and has been doing so to increasing effect. Even Donald Trump has been able to swing it a few times, despite his obvious deep involvement. Apparently to Republican voters, it’s better to be a buyer than a seller at the politician market. Nobody else in the race has a chance of using corruption to their advantage as an issue.
Hillary Clinton’s long record (the downside of “experience” is that it leaves a record) leaves her defenseless against the weapon of the corruption issue. And Republicans know it. Donald Trump has already fired a shot across her bow by mentioning her association with him. It is not unlikely that one of the reasons the Republican establishment has begun cozying up to the Donald is that they see a possibility he can beat Hillary. If they’re right, corruption will no doubt be the main feature of their general election campaign. Another endless round of accusations and scandals surrounding a Clinton, this time with a lot more evidence than was available to those pushing the Vince Foster conspiracy nonsense. Should Clinton win, the drumbeat would continue as long as she maintained office. Anybody who remembers the Nineties should be tingling in anticipation of that prospect.
We cannot roll back the corruption of our political system with more corruption. The Democratic party can only win a corrupt contest by trying to be just as corrupt as the Republicans, but they have more billionaires than we do. The only way to win is with asymmetric warfare, by not playing according to their rules. Hillary Clinton cannot do this. Bernie Sanders can. The American people have had enough with the corrupt status quo. Anyone who calls him or herself a Progressive should not tolerate it, for historical reasons if nothing else. Who will fight this corruption if we don’t?
Bernie Sanders will be attacked as a socialist, and a Red Commie, and a Godless atheist, and who knows what the fuck else. But Bernie Sanders is a moral man who has spent his life working for and fighting for the people. He also has Kryptonite against the Republican smears: the awesome, shameless, historic corruption of today’s Republican party. He can parry their thrusts with the Koch brothers and climate change denialism and Social Security privatization and tax cuts for billionaires and the Iraq war debacle. He knows how to stay on message and present a vision to the American people through all the fog and distractions of the media courtiers. And even the country’s owners should listen to him, because Soak the Rich is better than Eat the Rich. His governing philosophy is simple: the Golden Rule.