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Sunday, June 27, 2004
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"HOLY FUCK, HONEY, WE'RE RICH!"
Wow, it turns out that the Jews don't control the economy, after all. Teresa Heinz Kerry does.
She's nutty as hell and has an accent that makes her sound like she's from Jupiter, but she's got all the money. In fact, she has what vice president Dick Cheney would call "fuck you money."
Teresa Heinz Kerry, through a network of investments in blue-chip corporations, venture capital funds and municipal bonds, controls a family fortune worth an estimated $1 billion, an analysis of public records shows.
The $1 billion figure is double the estimates of her wealth that are widely cited in news stories about her husband, Sen. John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.
The couple would rank as the wealthiest to occupy the White House, far surpassing such storied presidential fortunes as the Kennedys'. Their assets are so vast and far-reaching that they mirror the U.S. economy and will probably raise questions about conflicts of interest.
The Kennedy analogy is an apt one. President Kennedy's 1960 race was financed almost entirely by his father's fortune. The campaign's spending became so extravagent that Joe Kennedy was quoted as saying to his son, "I'll buy you the presidency, but I'll be damned if I pay for a landslide." These days, even thinking such a thing is illegal.
Campaign finance reform is no fun at all.
It gets even less fun when you consider the conflict of interest point. You see, if Kerry does in fact win the presidency -and he's raising a surprising amount of money himself- he can't be expected to fairly govern if his wife's investments are factored into his decision making. And the fact that she owns vast swaths of America make it impossible for him not to consider those investments.
Which means that Teresa will be forced to put her assets in a blind trust. President Carter did this upon his election. It turns out that he was a man of surprising means and didn't want the integrity of his decisions questions. So into a blind trust they went. And disappeared forever. During the four years of his presidency, all of Carter's peanut money evaporated. He went into the White House rather wealthy and emerged broke.
And he didn't have anywhere near the amount of money Mrs. Kerry does. It'll almost be worth her husband's election to see the look of terror on her face when it's explained that she'll no longer be allowed to roll around in her money. That'll be fun.
On the other hand, having a fuckload of money doesn't guaruntee sucess in politics. In fact, if often gets in the way.
In 1980, John B. Connally famously spent $12 million to capture one delegate to the 1980 Republican convention. In the Democratic race earlier this year, Howard Dean set fund-raising records over the Internet, only to exhaust roughly $50 million on a spending spree that helped him win only his home state of Vermont.
John Connally's experience is highly instructive. Connally had much more than money going for him. He was also incredibly famous. He starred in a little movie you may have heard of, it was called the Zapruder film. That "magic bullet" that is so often discussed tore through John Conally before entering President Kennedy. He was also Secretary of the Treasury in the Nixon administration. Oh, and he nearly went to prison as a result of Watergate.
He had zillions of dollars and unbeliveably high name recognition. And he still got crushed like a fucking beer can. Connally made the mistake of running for the Republican nomination fifteen seconds after being a Democrat of some 40 years standing. All the money in the world couldn't change that.
We're all familiar with the Howard Dean experience? Yeeeeeeahhhhrrrrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Then there's Ross Perot. At one point in 1992, Larry King seemed to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Ross Perot's. Perot had $4 billion, or he was worth four Teresa Heinz Kerrys. He spent $60 million of his own money to get......no electoral votes.
Of course, Ross Perot is batshit fucking crazy.
If there's a lesson to learned from all this, I guess it would be that mentally ill people with money love losing that money in American politics.
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