by Al Terego

In a decision he almost certainly regrets, John Kerry sold his Italian estate to actor George Clooney for $7.8 million just before declaring that he would run for president.

As the richest man (by far) in the United States Senate, Kerry may have suspected that it would be more difficult for a plutocrat to run a successful campaign posing hypocritically as a “common man” when he owned a ‘little villa in Italy.’

He couldn’t have known how otherwise convenient it might have been. After all, consider his assertion that a number of foreign leaders (other than, we suppose he intended to say, Kim Jong Il, Abu Musab Al Zarkawi and the new socialist prime minister in Spain, Neville Whatshisname) had secretly expressed their support for his campaign. When pressed to name names, he refused to share any. When the absolute lack of any opportunity for Kerry to have met with such foreign leaders was documented through the work of diligent and skeptical journalists, he was forced to plead weakly that, well, you could meet almost anyone in a New York City restaurant. (The image of Kerry and Chirac downing dogs at Nathan’s while discussing comparative ethics is just too delicious.)

Imagine how much more credible it all would have been if Kerry had been able instead to refer to ‘the privacy of my Italian estate’ as the venue of his sub rosa endorsements. Another political might-have-been.

However much the Democrats may wish us to be, Americans aren’t generally into the ‘politics of envy.’ Few would truly begrudge Kerry his fortune (though more might disapprove of his chosen method of acquisition). But we tend to dislike blatant hypocrisy, and arrogance. Most of us probably won’t ever care much about John Kerry’s personal wealth. But we might begin to care about the way he simultaneously flaunts, exploits and denies it.

–From the July 2004 Austin Review