Those who made their money after entering politics are the real threat to our democracy.
The New York Times spent the weekend in a hysterical frenzy over the financial-disclosure forms of key Trump advisers, despite the fact that the disclosures provided virtually no information we did not already know. Politico and the Washington Post joined the Times in completely missing the only pertinent point of the story: To a man (and woman), every rich Trump-administration official made their money before entering politics, not after and as a result of it.
There have been countless attempts to cast doubt on the sincerity of President Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp,” all of which seem to require a misapprehension of the phrase’s meaning: The American people are fed up with the conflicted cronies who have exploited them and betrayed their trust; not with those who started and sold businesses, invested capital well, or innovated in the private sector. The justifiable anxiety and cynicism the population has is with politically obtained wealth, not with those who made their money in the private sector before entering public service for a fraction of the pay. Rex Tillerson built a $239 million net worth at ExxonMobil before leaving to take a $203,000 annual salary as secretary of state. Harry Reid, meanwhile, entered legislative life with a net worth of maybe $1 million and is now worth north of $10 million, despite never earning more than $193,000 in annual salary as a senator. Hillary Clinton herself infamously claimed that she and her husband “left the White House broke,” and they spent the next 15 years amassing a net worth well north of $100 million on the strength of their political clout.
None of this is to suggest that Reid, the Clintons, and other leftist stars are the only poster children for monetization of one’s political life. Republican Trent Lott left the Senate in 2007 with a net worth of about $1 million and immediately parlayed his relatively unimpressive political career into a large seven-figure-per-year lobbying career. Newt Gingrich drew laughs and snickers in 2012 when he claimed that his lucrative consulting agreement with Freddie Mac was for “his work as a historian.” Powerful people such as Reid, Clinton, Lott, and Gingrich leave office with impressive rolodexes and the influence needed to capitalize on them. They don’t even bother pretending that their marketability is based on some unique skillset they possessed before entering politics; they sell themselves as influence peddlers, plain and simple. They have done great damage to the public trust, and that damage must be undone and prevented in the future.
Why, then, do the media portray those successful financiers and business executives entering government in the twilight years of their working lives as worse than those who enriched themselves through politics? Since the mere accumulation of wealth is no sin in American society, let alone a crime, why would anyone care that the executives, financiers, and lawyers surrounding Donald Trump are wealthy and accomplished? There are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize Trump’s staffing choices, but it strains credibility to suggest that even the most controversial among them are “in it for the money.”
The media, knowing this, have apparently decided to let the mere announcement of Team Trump’s wealth stand on its own as an implied rebuke to the White House. They are wrong to do so. The economic success one has in private-sector life should be worn as a badge of honor in a country that values prosperity and growth. If we want to raise the volume on politically toxic wealth, we have to start with the broken system that makes gazillionaires of former politicians — and there are none of those in this administration.
— David L. Bahnsen is a trustee of the National Review Institute and the founder and chief investment officer of the Bahnsen Group, a wealth-management firm in Newport Beach, Calif.
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