2/10/17
Since long before Bruce Rauner won the race for governor
of Illinois in 2014, the Prairie State’s Democrats have been criticizing Mr.
Rauner because he is, or at least was before becoming governor, inexperienced
in government and because he is a billionaire.
Whether Mr. Rauner is a billionaire I, and Mr. Rauner’s critics, don’t
know, but whether he is genuinely a billionaire, or merely a centimillionaire,
he has a lot of money, so such details are immaterial. But I digress.
One wonders whether the Democrats will tamp down such
criticism of Mr. Rauner now that Chris Kennedy has tossed his hat in the ring
for the gubernatorial nomination and J.B. Pritzker is soon to follow. Both of these men are most saliently
characterized by their being billionaires, or very close to it, and by their inexperience
in government. Will the Democrats show
a modicum of shame and stop criticizing Mr. Rauner for being wealthy and
inexperienced while they ride comfortably on the bandwagons of two men who
share these characteristics?
While they may, and only may, drop their “inexperienced”
attack as it goes stale after Mr. Rauner’s four years of being governor, the “Billionaire
Bruce Rauner” line of attack is sure to continue. The Democrats will likely find some way to
distinguish “good” wealth from “bad” wealth in their efforts to continue to
make this argument with a straight face.
But when twisting and contorting to come up with a rationale for deeming
Messrs. Kennedy and Pritzker as somehow virtuous in their wealth while decrying
Mr. Rauner as clearly despicable in his wealth, wouldn’t it be ironic if the
Democratic Party, which still thinks it is the party of the working person,
winds up blessing inherited wealth while condemning earned wealth? But that is exactly what the Democrats would
have to do if they care to draw a distinction between the wealth of Mr. Rauner
and that of Messrs. Pritzker and Kennedy.
So how do the Democrats square the virtue, at least in
the case of Messrs. Kennedy and Pritzker, of inherited wealth with their
long-held negative view of people’s working hard to assure their children a
more comfortable life than they experienced?
Probably the same way they justified their at least apparent hypocrisy
in the cases of, say, the rest of the Kennedy family, Franklin Roosevelt, John
Kerry (a triple bonus here; Mr. Kerry married into money that was obtained by
marrying into inherited money), Winthrop Rockefeller, etc., etc., etc.
The notion seems to be that those who inherited their
wealth are far removed from the reprehensible acts that resulted in their
ancestors’ accumulating that wealth.
According to this specious line of “reasoning,” those who amassed the
wealth did so by doing such terrible, in the liberal assessment of life, things
as providing people with goods and services that they wanted badly enough to
pay for them. By doing so, these
founders of the family fortune proved themselves scoundrels. On the other hand, their heirs, like Chris
Kennedy and J.B. Pritzker, engage in virtuous, selfless pursuits, like
bankrolling questionable social schemes concocted by people desperately trying
to avoid working for a living and by contributing boatloads, at least in the case
of Mr. Pritzker, of money to Democratic politicians seeking self-aggrandizement
under the guise of “public service.”
So the guys who made the money are bad but the guys who,
er, excrete away the money on various social engineering schemes and Democratic
politicians are good. Let’s see the
Democrats defend this fragile line of lassitudinous logic; they have no choice
once they embrace either Mr. Kennedy or Mr. Pritzker while continuing to skewer
Mr. Rauner for being (egads!) “rich.”
This should be a fun race for governor.
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