Corruption in politics is widely and correctly considered one of the great societal evils. Since politics is about gaining governmental power, and since governmental power is the epitome of irresistible force, the self-serving “buying” of that power is incredibly destructive, so much so that do-gooder politicians left and right perpetually pledge to root corruption out. This is usually presented as “get money out of politics.”

For decades, money in politics was considered so corrupting that even the appearance of corruption was considered sufficient to justify government restrictions on political spending (itself something protected by the First Amendment).

A few years ago, the Supreme Court incensed the Left with its Citizens United (CU) ruling, a ruling that removed restrictions on political spending by corporations (for-profit and non-profit), labor unions, associations, and assemblies of people under other legal structures. CU is also widely perceived as weakening the “appearance of corruption” metric, by asserting that it’s not the government’s job to manage public perceptions. Instead, it reinforced that corruption allegations need to be “quid pro quo,” i.e. that some link between money and favors needs to exist.

Hillary Clinton has made overturning CU a cornerstone of her platform. In true Orwellian black-is-white, up-is-down, war-is-peace doublethink, overturning a ruling that removed restrictions on free speech is supposed to improve free speech and liberty. The great big joke, one that many either forget or are ignorant of, is that CU was about Clinton herself. More specifically, about a movie that was critical of her.

Now, along with the joke, comes a great big irony. It turns out that Terry McAuliffe, governor of Virginia and a long-time Clinton pal and apparatchik, arranged for over half a million dollars in campaign contributions to the wife of the FBI agent leading the investigation of her email server scandal. The denials of connection and “quid pro quo” are strong, as they were after it turned out that Attorney General Loretta Lynch met privately with Bill Clinton not too long before the FBI and Justice opted not to prosecute Clinton for the email scandal.

Under an “appearance of corruption” guideline, these two circumstances absolutely reek. Clinton’s promise to overturn CU would suggest that she favors the “appearance of corruption” guideline that CU weakened. That is, it would suggest so if she actually wanted to overturn CU. I highly doubt she wants the restoration of “appearance of corruption” guidelines, though, because if such appearances counted, she’d be in shackles already. Instead, what I suspect she really wants is to limit corporate spending (but not union spending, of course) on politics, because such spending isn’t reliably liberal. But, that’s nuance too deep for most average folks. Clinton’s supporters get all rah-rah and gung-ho when talk of reversing CU comes up, and they typically conflate it with the nonsensical mantra “Corporations are not people!” (what are they, other than aggregates of people?).

Here’s where things get even more ironic. Clinton’s acolytes tend to apply a metric beyond “quid pro quo” and “appearance of corruption” when judging money in politics. Their third and most important metric is about the goal of the spending. There’s no blindfolded justice lady judging such spending without bias or preference, there’s only whether the spenders are supporting the correct issues and sides of issues or the evil, wrong, nasty sides of issues. Thus, George Soros can spend mountains of money electioneering and get cheered for it, but the Koch Brothers are the devil incarnate when they do likewise. And thus, McAuliffe’s half million steered to the wife of the guy investigating Clinton has nothing to do with the outcome of the FBI investigation.

Because, you know, the FBI is special and there’s no chance of political influence infiltrating its hallowed halls. Yeah, right, sure.

If “appearance of corruption” mattered, none of the high-dudgeon Lefties who scream bloody murder about money in politics would be voting for Clinton. Instead, they continually bend themselves into pretzels rationalizing away all those appearances of corruption, because, well, she’s Hillary Clinton and because, well, Trump is so evil.

If “appearance of corruption” mattered, as the Washington Post suggests the American public believes, Clinton would have never even won the Democratic nomination.

So, next time someone argues that we have to get money out of politics because even the appearance of corruption is bad, ask if that applies to Democrats like Clinton.

Actually, don’t bother. We know the answer already. “Dirty” only matters if you’re on the “other” side.

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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