"Hillary could be president someday. Chelsea could end up in the Senate. It couldn't hurt to be remembered as someone who threw them some money when they asked."
This, I 100% guarantee you, was the calculus when Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hillary for a one- or two-hour speech. She doesn't have anything new to say that everyone hasn't already heard million times before. It's not like she shared any valuable stock tips during those talks. Wealthy individuals and corporations pay politicians for one thing: access.
"It's not pay to play, unless somebody actually gave someone 50 cents to say I need a meeting," counters DNC interim chair Donna Brazile. "No. In this great country, when you meet with constituents, when you meet with heads of states, when you meet like Bono, who I love, you meet with them because they want to bring a matter to your attention. That's not pay to play."
It ain't 50 cents.
But it is pay to play. Absolutely.
Access is a zero-sum game. If I get a meeting with a senator, that's a meeting someone else doesn't get. I shouldn't get a leg up over you because I donated to a politically connected, nominally charitable foundation. For that matter, I shouldn't get a meeting you can't get because I know someone, or because I'm famous, or whatever. Access should be, has to be in a democracy, determined solely by meritocratic criteria. Political leaders like Hillary Clinton need to be meeting with people who can offer them the best advice and who need the most help -- not those who bought their way in.
Anyone who doesn't understand that access always equals corruption, even when access doesn't result in favors, doesn't deserve to hold political office.
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