By Tom Toth
“We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt … we struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea’s education. You know, it was not easy.”—Hillary Rodham Clinton, 6/9/2014
Hillary Clinton, the former First Lady, Senator from New York, Secretary of State, and presumptive Democrat presidential nominee for 2016 is now incapable of disguising one key trait that may categorically disqualify her from being elected to the Oval Office.
She is irreconcilably out of touch with the American people.
Clinton was pressed by Diane Sawyer in a recent interview about her and former President Bill Clinton’s enormous public speaking profits, which together have amassed over $100 million for the couple. Her seemingly unscripted response was telling — complaining bluntly that she and her husband were “dead broke” when they left the White House in 2001.
Dead broke.
The fact that a two-term President’s family could leave the White House dead broke would be an astonishing statement for most people in the United States.
Before analyzing this further, consider all the financial factors of the Clintons’ worth: The Clintons made over $400,000 per year while in the White House, they receive a pension of over $200,000 after leaving, the houses Hillary complained about paying the mortgages on were purchased for $2.85 million and $1.7 million, when she ran for the Senate she claimed over $15 million of income in 2001, and up to $20 million in 2004.
For anyone remotely close to the U.S. median household income of $51,017, being “dead broke” would look nothing like purchasing a million dollar home a year after while owning another multimillion dollar home on embassy row in Washington D.C., receiving a $200,000 paycheck for nothing, and being able to demand hundreds of millions of dollars to speak publicly.
It would look nothing like this because “dead broke” means something entirely different to Hillary Clinton than it does any average American.
Many on the left were quick to suggest out that George H.W. Bush lost in 1992 because he went to a grocery manufacturer and didn’t know how checkout scanners work, or that they even existed. John Kerry was politically challenged in 2004 when pictures of him windsurfing on Nantucket leaked to the public. John McCain was embarrassed when he was unable to recall how many houses he owned, when asked during the 2008 campaign. The Obama campaign spent millions in 2012 to convince the American people that Mitt Romney was nothing but a rich aristocrat—a member of the financial elite that could not be trusted because, after all, how could he possibly understand the plight of the poor and downtrodden in America?
These messages were all, to varying degrees, effective in large part because large percentages of the modern electorate vote based on feelings on who cares more for them personally, as opposed to who’s the more capable leader.
Hillary’s “dead broke” statement applies to her image to a whole new level of arrogant wealth and it opened a glimpse into her world of wealth that voters will see.
The day after she told the world about when she and Bill were “dead broke,” Hillary scrambled back to Good Morning America to say “[l]et me just clarify that I fully appreciate how hard life is for so many Americans today.”
She doesn’t, and she knows that it’s a major vulnerability to her campaign.
Tom Toth is the digital content director for Americans for Limited Government
