In this week’s magazine, Steve Hayes has an excellent article about how Hillary Clinton’s tenure at the State Department intersected with her husband’s dealings at the Clinton Foundation. I highly suggest you read the whole thing, but here is the bottom line:
Indeed, the Clinton Foundation has many of the trappings of a political machine—an extra-governmental organization whose purpose, at least in part, was to help the Clintons sustain their vast political network while awaiting her 2016 campaign for the White House. It is pretty clear these efforts included preferential treatment from Hillary Clinton, in her capacity as secretary of state, for Clinton Foundation patrons.
This should be more of an issue in the presidential campaign, but alas it is not. The reason, obviously, is Donald Trump. Not only is he incapable of staying on message long enough to make an issue of this, but he himself is burdened by conflicts of interests.
And not just because he himself is a major donor to the Clinton Foundation. The New York Times published this sobering expose of Trump’s finances last week, in which it asserted:
An enormous amount of Trump’s business dealings are opaque—in no small part because the real estate mogul has, “declined to disclose his tax returns or allow an independent valuation of his assets.” The Times rightly takes Trump to task:
Of course, one could make a similar point about Clinton. Who knows what sort of promises she or her husband made to secure these massive donations to the Clinton Foundation? It is pretty clear that something is rotten in the state of Denmark—but, as with Trump, we do not—cannot—know the exact details, for they are being withheld from public view.
Such conflicts of interest are as old as government itself, and they were a real anxiety for the Founding Fathers. In The Vices of the Political System of the United States, James Madison argued that politicians seek office for three reasons—ambition, personal interest, and regard for the public good. He continued,
This is precisely the problem with Trump and Clinton having such extensive side deals. Who knows what will motivate them as president?
It is naive to think such personal obligations do not matter. The history of the 19th century is replete with stories of politicians who sold out the public good to line their own pockets. For instance, James G. Blaine—Republican presidential nominee in 1884 and longtime party leader—was widely (and correctly) believed to be in the pocket of the railroad industry, especially Jay Gould. The railroad barons would ply him with favors, and Blaine would ensure they did not have to pay back their government loans. This prompted Senator George Edmunds of Vermont to complain:
And it was not just infamous politicians like Blaine who were guilty of this. During the War of 1812 James Monroe—a hero of the Revolutionary War, a leader of the Jeffersonian movement, and a reliable (if not outstanding) public servant—was hard up for cash, and borrowed $5,000 from John Jacob Astor. He was persistently unable to pay Astor back, but eventually his benefactor reaped a huge bounty. As president, Monroe rescinded an order prohibiting foreigners from engaging in the fur trade, which was a boon to Astor’s American Fur Company.
Madison—who for his forty years in public life was free of such conflicts of interest—would argue this is a corruption of the republican form of government. The power that politicians in our system hold is in trust from the people themselves, to be used on the public behalf, not for their benefactors. A government of the cronies, by the cronies, and for the cronies is an oligarchy, not a republic.
The only way to root out such characters from office, Madison reckoned, is via regular elections, “which [enable] the majority to defeat [these] sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution.”
But what is to be done when the public lacks the information to determine who has been corrupted by conflicts of interest? The answer is as simple as it is sobering: nothing. That is the real problem today. The people simply have no idea who Clinton or Trump is beholden to, and so will be unable to evaluate whether their actions as president are consistent with the public interest, or their self-interest.
Of course, the people are hardly blameless in this fiasco. After all, Clinton and Trump were the choice of primary voters, millions of them. They had selected them over candidates who were not so ethically burdened.
I reckon that the Framers would be grievously disappointed in us. They knew full well that, when push comes to shove, maintenance of republican government depends upon the people, who have a duty to exercise their sovereignty in a sober and thoughtful manner. When they fail to do that, there is precious little to be done for the cause of republican government.
As H.L. Mencken said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” This year, the voters seemed not to care much for good government, and so they’re bound to get a president who doesn’t much care, either.
