WikiLeaks’ dump of messages to and from
Clinton’s campaign chief offer an unprecedented view into the workings of the
elite, and how it looks after itself
The emails currently roiling the US presidential campaign are
part of some unknown digital collection amassed by the troublesome Anthony
Weiner, but if your purpose is to understand the clique of people who dominate
Washington today, the emails that really matter are the ones being slowly released by WikiLeaks from the
hacked account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta. They are last
week’s scandal in a year running over with scandals, but in truth their significance goes far beyond
mere scandal: they are a window into the soul of the Democratic party and into
the dreams and thoughts of the class to whom the party answers.
The class to which I refer is not rising in angry protest; they
are by and large pretty satisfied, pretty contented. Nobody takes road trips to
exotic West Virginia to see what the members of this class looks like or how
they live; on the contrary, they are the ones for whom such stories are
written. This bunch doesn’t have to make do with a comb-over TV mountebank for
a leader; for this class, the choices are always pretty good, and this year
they happen to be excellent.
They are the comfortable and well-educated mainstay of our
modern Democratic party. They are also the grandees of our national media; the
architects of our software; the designers of our streets; the high officials of
our banking system; the authors of just about every plan to fix social security
or fine-tune the Middle East with precision droning. They are, they think, not
a class at all but rather the enlightened ones, the people who must be answered
to but who need never explain themselves.
Let us turn the magnifying glass on them for a change, by
sorting through the hacked personal emails of John Podesta, who has been a
Washington power broker for decades. I admit that I feel uncomfortable digging
through this hoard; stealing someone’s email is a crime, after all, and it is
outrageous that people’s personal information has been exposed, since WikiLeaks doesn’t
seem to have redacted the emails in any way. There is also the issue of
authenticity to contend with: we don’t know absolutely and for sure that these
emails were not tampered with by whoever stole them from John Podesta. The
supposed authors of the messages are refusing to confirm or deny their
authenticity, and though they seem to be real, there is a small possibility
they aren’t.
With all that taken into consideration, I think the WikiLeaks
releases furnish us with an opportunity to observe the upper reaches of the
American status hierarchy in all its righteousness and majesty.
The dramatis personae of the
liberal class are all present in this amazing body of work: financial
innovators. High-achieving colleagues attempting to get jobs for their
high-achieving children. Foundation executives doing fine and noble things.
Prizes, of course, and high academic achievement.
Certain industries loom large and virtuous here. Hillary’s
ingratiating speeches to Wall Street are well known of course, but what is
remarkable is that, in the party of Jackson and Bryan and Roosevelt, smiling
financiers now seem to stand on every corner, constantly proffering advice
about this and that. In one now-famous email chain, for example, the reader can
watch current US trade representative Michael Froman, writing from a Citibank
email address in 2008, appear to name President Obama’s cabinet even
before the great hope-and-change election was decided (incidentally, an
important clue to understanding why that greatest of zombie banks was never put
out of its misery).
The far-sighted innovators of Silicon Valley are also here in
force, interacting all the time with the leaders of the party of the people. We
watch as Podesta appears to email Sheryl Sandberg. He makes plans
to visit Mark Zuckerberg (who, according to
one missive, wants to “learn more about next steps for his philanthropy and
social action”). Podesta exchanges emails with an entrepreneur about an ugly
race now unfolding for Silicon Valley’s seat in Congress; this man, in turn,
appears to forward to Podesta the remarks of yet another Silicon Valley
grandee, who complains that one of the Democratic
combatants in that fight was criticizing billionaires who give to Democrats.
Specifically, the miscreant Dem in question was said to be:
“… spinning (and attacking) donors who have supported Democrats.
John Arnold and Marc Leder have both given to Cory Booker, Joe Kennedy, and
others. He is also attacking every billionaire that donates to [Congressional
candidate] Ro [Khanna], many whom support other Democrats as well.”
Attacking billionaires! In the year 2015! It was, one of the
correspondents appears to write, “madness and political malpractice of the
party to allow this to continue”.
There are wonderful things to be found in this treasure trove
when you search the gilded words “Davos” or “Tahoe”. But it is when you search
“Vineyard” on the WikiLeaks dump that you realize these people truly inhabit a
different world from the rest of us. By “vineyard”, of course, they mean
Martha’s Vineyard, the ritzy vacation resort island off the coast of
Massachusetts where presidents Clinton and Obama spent most of their summer
vacations. The Vineyard is a place for the very, very rich to unwind, yes, but
as we learn from these emails, it is also a place of high idealism; a land of
enlightened liberal commitment far beyond anything ordinary citizens can ever
achieve.
Consider, for example, the 2015 email from a foundation executive to a
retired mortgage banker (who then seems to have forwarded the note on to
Podesta, and thus into history) expressing concern that “Hillary’s image is
being torn apart in the media and there’s not enough effective push back”. The
public eavesdrops as yet another financier invites Podesta to a dinner featuring
“food produced exclusively by the island’s farmers and fishermen which will be
matched with specially selected wines”. We learn how a Hillary campaign
aide recommendedthat a policy statement appear on a
certain day so that “It wont get in the way of any other news we are trying to
make – but far enough ahead of Hamptons and Vineyard money events”. We even
read the pleadings of a man who wants to be
invited to a state dinner at the White House and who offers, as one of several
exhibits in his favor, the fact that he “joined the DSCC Majority Trust in
Martha’s Vineyard (contributing over $32,400 to Democratic senators) in July
(Hilariously, in another email chain, the Clinton team appears to
scheme to “hit” Bernie Sanders for attending “DSCC retreats on Martha’s
Vineyard with lobbyists”.)
Then there is the apparent nepotism, the dozens if not hundreds
of mundane emails in which petitioners for this or that plum Washington job or
high-profile academic appointment politely appeal to Podesta – the ward-heeler
of the meritocratic elite – for a solicitous word whispered in the ear of a
powerful crony.
This genre of Podesta email, in which people try to arrange jobs for
themselves or their kids, points us toward the most fundamental thing we know
about the people at the top of this class: their loyalty to one another and the
way it overrides everything else. Of course Hillary Clinton staffed her state
department with investment bankers and then did speaking engagements for
investment banks as soon as she was done at the state department. Of course
she appears to think that any kind of bank reform
should “come from the industry itself”. And of course no elite bankers were
ever prosecuted by the Obama administration. Read these emails and you
understand, with a start, that the people at the top tier of American life all
know each other. They are all engaged in promoting one another’s careers,
constantly.
Everything blurs into
everything else in this world. The state department, the banks, Silicon Valley,
the nonprofits, the “Global CEO Advisory Firm” that appearsto have solicited donations for the
Clinton Foundation. Executives here go from foundation to government to thinktank
to startup. There are honors. Venture capital. Foundation grants. Endowed
chairs. Advanced degrees. For them the door revolves. The friends all succeed.
They break every boundary.
But the One Big Boundary remains. Yes, it’s all supposed to be a meritocracy.
But if you aren’t part of this happy, prosperous in-group – if you don’t have
John Podesta’s email address – you’re out.