Will Democrats Care if the Clintons Are (That) Rich?

It's hard to imagine that anyone watching the 2008 presidential campaign woke up on Friday still thinking of Bill and Hillary Clinton as that impecunious yuppie couple we met in Little Rock back in 1992.

Still, eyes popped and eyebrows rose at the numbers in the news: The Clintons rolled up well over $100 million in their first seven years out of the White House -- including $20 million last year.

It's been well publicized that both the former president and former first lady received millions for their autobiographical manuscripts. And there's been general acknowledgement that Bill Clinton leads the list of top-dollar speakers at international conclaves.

What may have caught some of us by surprise, however, is the number and the average swag from those speaking engagements. You knew there were people willing to spend astonishing sums to impress their guests, but $52 million for speeches at business gatherings and motivational confabs? That's a lot of impressiveness.

The sheer speed and overpowering ease with which the fresh Clinton fortune was amassed amazed us. The Clinton legend, heretofore framed entirely in terms of political office, takes on a gilded edge.

Is any of this a problem for anyone other than the professional Clinton detractors? Will ordinary voters, especially those making less than $50,000 a year, be OK with a putative champion who's literally making 400 times as much?

Democrats in the past have accepted presidential nominees who were born to great wealth (Jack Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt), as well as those with aristocratic pedigrees (John Kerry, Al Gore, Adlai Stevenson) and those who were affluent before arriving in the Oval Office (Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter). Just as many of the Democratic standard bearers have been sons of the middle class who spent much of their prior career in government (Clinton, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey and Harry Truman).

Democrats had a chance to size up each of these candidates and their financial background. They could decide whether they accepted JFK or FDR as a friend of the working man. Now they are being asked to make the same decision about a candidate borne on a tide of money generated by her husband's willingness to sell the cachet and connections of his presidency in the marketplace.

As a rule, most ex-presidents have made a soft landing on the assets they had before entering the White House. They were people of means first, national leaders after. Not the Clintons. They spent their early years together in government and their middle years together primarily in government. She made some money as a lawyer, but nothing like what she might have made outside of Arkansas.

When Bill was elected, the Clintons had never even owned a home. But over the next eight years, they became accustomed to holidays on Martha's Vineyard and in other exclusive retreats. It was a lifestyle to which they could see themselves becoming accustomed. That is an adaptation few could resist.

So once in the private sector, they made up for lost time. Bill Clinton may have been the first president in our history to be young, energetic and saleable enough to maximize his post-office earning power in this way. He saw his opportunities and took them.

No one questions his right to have done so, or her right to have ridden along. But for those who find any aspect of Clinton Inc. unseemly, the prospect of giving the enterprise another lease on the White House will be troubling.