JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
- 63,590
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This was supposed to be the kind of monetary windfall guaranteed to keep a person powerful and able to buy the white House, but somewhere along the way, the wheels came off.
Could it have been a $4 TRILLION Quantitative Easing program?
The First Postmodern Political Machine
The Clinton political machine, like all machines, ultimately runs on money. Somebody has to pay the apparatchiks and loyal technicians who keep the wheels turning. In traditional machines, the money came out of the rough and tumble of local politics: You stroke City Hall, and City Hall strokes you. Private contractors who depend on city contracts, public sector unions, law firms, and Wall Street banks who manage city pension funds and peddle the city’s bonds: There is an army of special interests whose businesses do well when the Mayor is a friend. But the Clintons don’t do it that way anymore; they figured out something better.
I don’t say that the Clintons are breaking the law, at least as far as the basic principles of the machine go. As Tammany Hall’s George Washington Plunkett once said, there is such a thing as “honest graft.” In the old fashioned political machine, that meant that you only take money from the group you had already decided on legitimate grounds would get the contract. The new machine offers even more opportunities for honest graft than the old kind.
The machine gathers the cash that provides perches and incomes to Clinton loyalists; the loyalists keep the publicity machine pumping, keep the networks of contacts and patronage refreshed throughout the vast Clinton network, and staff what amounts to a permanent campaign. This is what party machines used to do: provide incomes for the army of operatives who would jump into action to make sure the machine stayed in office.
But the cash doesn’t come from a system of payoffs that go all the way from the cop on the beat up to the Board of Aldermen and the Mayor. The cash comes from donations and speaking fees. When the husband of the Secretary of State or potential next President calls about a special charity project, most people, even if they happen to be CEOs of major companies or senior government officials, take the call. More than that, there will be times when government and corporate officials will reach out and make the call themselves, rather than waiting passively to hear that the Clinton machine has an ask.
The donor proposition is rock solid. Any fashionable cause that can gain applause at Davos and in the world of gentry liberalism here at home (empowering women in development, climate change, entrepreneurship and the poor, disaster relief, medical research, and and so on) gets office space and a PR package at the Foundation. Sometimes some real good gets done, though one doesn’t read much about how the Clinton Foundation’s rigorous financial controls, inspired programmatic vision, tight management, and relentless concentration on keeping costs low make it one of the leaders in philanthropy for getting the job done cheaply and effectively. What donors buy, or think they are buying, is influence and face time with two of the most powerful people in the world and their political machine; what they get on the side includes good PR, some invites and connections, one’s picture with a Clinton or a courageous and charismatic human rights figure from the developing world, and a tax deduction for a charitable contribution. For big donations, you get more; Clintons, if we can believe Donald Trump, will come to your wedding if the invite comes with enough “warmth.”
Could it have been a $4 TRILLION Quantitative Easing program?
The First Postmodern Political Machine
The Clinton political machine, like all machines, ultimately runs on money. Somebody has to pay the apparatchiks and loyal technicians who keep the wheels turning. In traditional machines, the money came out of the rough and tumble of local politics: You stroke City Hall, and City Hall strokes you. Private contractors who depend on city contracts, public sector unions, law firms, and Wall Street banks who manage city pension funds and peddle the city’s bonds: There is an army of special interests whose businesses do well when the Mayor is a friend. But the Clintons don’t do it that way anymore; they figured out something better.
T
he Clintons stand where money, influence, and celebrity form a nexus. When Hillary Clinton was running the State Department and Bill Clinton was shaking down contributors to the Foundation, the donors knew, or thought they knew, what they were getting. Now that Hillary is running for President, the donors have an even better idea of what good things might come to them—or what problems and complications could develop if they cut the Clintons off.I don’t say that the Clintons are breaking the law, at least as far as the basic principles of the machine go. As Tammany Hall’s George Washington Plunkett once said, there is such a thing as “honest graft.” In the old fashioned political machine, that meant that you only take money from the group you had already decided on legitimate grounds would get the contract. The new machine offers even more opportunities for honest graft than the old kind.
The machine gathers the cash that provides perches and incomes to Clinton loyalists; the loyalists keep the publicity machine pumping, keep the networks of contacts and patronage refreshed throughout the vast Clinton network, and staff what amounts to a permanent campaign. This is what party machines used to do: provide incomes for the army of operatives who would jump into action to make sure the machine stayed in office.
But the cash doesn’t come from a system of payoffs that go all the way from the cop on the beat up to the Board of Aldermen and the Mayor. The cash comes from donations and speaking fees. When the husband of the Secretary of State or potential next President calls about a special charity project, most people, even if they happen to be CEOs of major companies or senior government officials, take the call. More than that, there will be times when government and corporate officials will reach out and make the call themselves, rather than waiting passively to hear that the Clinton machine has an ask.
The donor proposition is rock solid. Any fashionable cause that can gain applause at Davos and in the world of gentry liberalism here at home (empowering women in development, climate change, entrepreneurship and the poor, disaster relief, medical research, and and so on) gets office space and a PR package at the Foundation. Sometimes some real good gets done, though one doesn’t read much about how the Clinton Foundation’s rigorous financial controls, inspired programmatic vision, tight management, and relentless concentration on keeping costs low make it one of the leaders in philanthropy for getting the job done cheaply and effectively. What donors buy, or think they are buying, is influence and face time with two of the most powerful people in the world and their political machine; what they get on the side includes good PR, some invites and connections, one’s picture with a Clinton or a courageous and charismatic human rights figure from the developing world, and a tax deduction for a charitable contribution. For big donations, you get more; Clintons, if we can believe Donald Trump, will come to your wedding if the invite comes with enough “warmth.”
