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“Dear Jack, don’t buy a single vote more than necessary,” John F. Kennedy said, claiming to have just read a telegram from his father. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.”
There was no telegram, but JFK’s joke was meant to blunt criticism that his father’s vast riches were being used to sway the 1960 presidential election. Old Joe Kennedy, the family patriarch, certainly had enough if it—as much as $3.6 billion, adjusted for inflation today. His son’s share of that made John F. Kennedy the wealthiest man to ever seek the presidency—until Donald Trump came along in 2015.
But even Trump’s wealth—which has flattened out to “just” $3.1 billion since becoming president, pales in comparison to Michael Bloomberg. At $53.1 billion, the former New York City mayor’s fortune is 17 times bigger than Trump’s.
Consider this: According to an estimate by OpenSecrets.org, spending on the entire 2016 presidential campaign was $2.49 billion. Bloomberg could spend that much on his own (and just might) and it would barely make a dent in his wealth (which has probably increased since last Fall). His resources are bottomless—easily many times more than every other presidential candidate combined.
And since entering the race, Bloomberg hasn’t been shy about spending it. Federal Election Commission records show he burned through $180 million in his first month alone (December), buying up so much TV time that it is driving up ad rates in key markets. Here’s some context: that $180 million spent in just one month was more than what President Trump, Bernie Sanders (the winner of last night’s New Hampshire primary), Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar (who is moving up fast) and Andrew Yang (who dropped out last night) raised in the entire fourth quarter of 2019–-combined. The seven of them brought in $177.6 million over three months, less than what Bloomberg spent in one.
This kind of clout has helped Bloomberg buy his way up the ladder. RealClearPolitics, which aggregates national polls, currently puts him third, behind Biden—whose campaign is fading after bombing in Iowa and New Hampshire—and Sanders. People who lay odds on this sort thing put him second, saying Bloomberg has a one-in-four shot of winning the nomination. Think about that. Everyone else has been campaigning for months, years really. And Bloomberg parachutes in after Thanksgiving, and is already near the top. Money isn’t called the “mother’s milk of politics” for nothing, you know.
Critics say if it weren’t for Bloomberg’s wealth, he wouldn’t be able to have this kind of traction. Then how to explain the meteoric rise of another former mayor, Buttigieg—whose net worth is estimated at a modest $100,000? Buttigieg, who is still paying off his student loans, has become a serious contender for the Democratic nomination not because of money, but because of ideas, and the polished and articulate way in which he presents them.
Thus: Ideas count, but money unquestionably helps you spread those ideas. That’s why “Mayor Pete” and every other candidate has to go dialing for dollars every day. Buttigieg, for instance, has spent a lot of time wooing Silicon Valley, recently attending a round robin of fundraisers and rubbing elbows with bold-faced names in the tech world. Even billionaire Trump spends a lot of time raising cash—he’s headlining another fundraiser tonight at his DC hotel, for instance.
The difference between Bloomberg and his rivals is OPM—other people’s money. He has no need for it, a huge advantage that means he is indebted to no one, while Buttigieg’s passing the tin cup around has made him the target of Sanders and Warren, who say he’s now just another politician in the pocket of a bunch of fat cat billionaires. Or as Sanders calls them, “billyon-ehs.”
Is this good or bad? You can decide for yourself. My view on politicians with money is the same as my view on anyone with money. The money is an inanimate object, but the quest for it, and how it is used, merely reflects and amplifies the pre-existing traits of any individual. How else to explain how two very wealthy men—Bloomberg and Trump—could be such polar opposites in terms of character and values? The former shows us that you can make tons of money and be decent and respected; the latter shows us that you can make tons of money yet be considered indecent and disrespected. Again, the money is merely the vehicle by which those values—or lack thereof—are expressed.
That’s why Bloomberg with oodles of money, and Buttigieg with none, would make better presidents than Trump; Because in the end, character counts. If we’ve only learned one lesson from the last few years, let this be it.
