Can a politician take big money and still be their own person?

Let's turn this question around.

Would you give $15 million to a politician who could take big money and still be their own person?

Why would anyone give big money to someone who could take it and still be their own person?

Because they get talked out of the money by a professional politician who is expert at promising everyone everything?

You flipped the perspective from the person receiving the money to the person giving it, but the central question remains. A politician might be shrewd enough to schmooze money out of people without promising anything, and the rich donor might risk giving money without a guarantee.

Warren had written an editorial about a piece of bankruptcy legislation that she opposed. Then-First Lady Hillary Clinton read it and asked for a meeting to discuss the bill and Warren’s research, which showed that it would disproportionately affect women and children. After the meeting, Mrs. Clinton went back to the White House and the Clinton Administration reversed its position on the bill. President Clinton eventually vetoed it, and in her autobiography, Hillary Clinton took credit for preventing the bankruptcy bill from passage.

But then Hillary Clinton became a senator. Warren describes what happened when the bankruptcy bill again came before the Senate shortly after Clinton was elected:

ELIZABETH WARREN: She voted in favor of it.

BILL MOYERS: Why?

ELIZABETH WARREN: As Senator Clinton, the pressures are very different. It’s a well-financed industry. You know a lot of people don’t realize that the industry that gave the most money to Washington over the past few years was not the oil industry, was not pharmaceuticals. It was consumer credit products. Those are the people. The credit card companies have been giving money, and they have influence.

BILL MOYERS: And Mrs. Clinton was one of them as senator.

ELIZABETH WARREN: She has taken money from the groups, and more to the point, she worries about them as a constituency.

BILL MOYERS: But what does this mean though to these people, these millions of people out there whom the politicians cavort in front of as favoring the middle class, and then are beholden to the powerful interests that undermine the middle class? What does this say about politics today?

ELIZABETH WARREN: You know this is the scary part about democracy today. It’s… We’re talking again about the impact of money. The credit industry on this bankruptcy bill has spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying, and as their profits grow, they just throw more into lobbying for how they can get laws that will make it easier and easier and easier to drain money out of the pockets of middle class families.

Quote:

Because they get talked out of the money by a professional politician who is expert at promising everyone everything?

You flipped the perspective from the person receiving the money to the person giving it, but the central question remains. A politician might be shrewd enough to schmooze money out of people without promising anything, and the rich donor might risk giving money without a guarantee.

I find this funny. You say this as if having a politician who can con big money donors out of their money (without giving them anything) is a good thing.

In my opinion, getting big money out of politics is the right way forward. Any candidate that can get most of his or her donations from small donations without their own super-PAC doesn't have to con anyone out of anything.

You might give them $15 million because they already think like you.