the american dream
I’m the first to admit that I’ve never really understood American politics. To my mind you either vote for the far right, and therefore support individually-oriented taxation policies, the death penalty, a confused & hypocritical foreign intervention policy, globalisation, no control on the ‘right’ to bear arms, and stalemate in the House of Representatives with regards to any proposed healthcare policy, ie the Democrats, or you vote for the extreme right, the Republicans. And don’t get me started on the Tea-Party.
This confused view was further compounded by (probably) the next leader of Obama’s Democratic party, Hilary Clinton, and her somewhat skewed view towards the great greenback. Last week, when out and about pushing her new weighty tome, Hard Choices, she was understandably questioned about her husband’s 100,000,000 dollar fortune and her 5,000,000 one she’s recently earned for public speaking. Her reply – that the couple had been “dead broke” when they left office and that they had “struggled to piece together the mortgage repayments for their houses” must surely go down as her own defining Marie Antoinette ‘let them eat cake’ moment. And completely ignoring the adage that when you’re in the hole the best thing you can do is stop digging, she followed it up with confiding that she doesn’t consider themselves “truly well off”. Keen to get in on the act their daughter Chelsea was happy to chip in with the fact that she doesn’t even care about money. Easy to say when you own a 10,500,000 dollar apartment, your hubby’s a wolf on Wall Street and you have a no-show job on NBC that pays a 600,000 dollar retainer.
The irony is that, within the circles she, and all other US politicians, move, she’s probably right. You only have to look at the family dynasties of the Roosevelts, Kennedys, Bushes, Romneys and Rockefellers to see clear evidence of how to get ahead in US politics.
