In a major announcement made through an Op-Ed entitled To Restore Trust in Government, Slow Wall Street's Revolving Door co-written by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) Sec. Clinton announced that she would be letting go of all the corporate insiders currently on her campaign staff. In a stunning declaration, Clinton said:
[I]ncreasingly, Americans' trust in government is eroding. And a big reason for that is the so-called revolving door between campaigns and government and the private sector.
Clinton was speaking of the revolving door between major corporations and the government, where individuals from powerful business sectors leave those companies and work as campaign and government officials. Clinto went on to say:
[I]n some cases, it can affect the public trust -- for example, if a public servant's past and future are tied to the financial industry. That's when people start worrying that the foxes are guarding the hen house.
snip
The American people need to be able to trust that every single person in Washington -- from the President of the United States all the way down to agency employees -- is putting the interests of the people first.
Reporters outside Clinton Campaign Headquarters could see former top execs from Goldman Sachs, Citi Group, and TransCanada carrying boxes filled with belongs as the left the building. One of the former campaign staffers responded, "Fucking Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have screwed everything up." The former official asked not to be identified for fear of getting sideways with the new mood of the country. The former official could be heard telling their former executive assistant to get their office ready to move into again while talking on their cell phone.
Sadly, the part above the fold is pure snark. The piece linked above is actually an Op-Ed written with Sen. Baldwin calling for the end of "golden parachutes" for executives from Wall Street who take government positions.
For those who don't know, "golden parachutes" are big payouts by a corporation to an employee when they go into government. Often, very often, these employees go right back into the same company or industry once they leave government. Almost always they start back where they were when they left or even higher. There is no way to prove a quid pro quo for favors while in government, but when something looks moldy it normally is.
The sad irony is that Clintons campaign is full of former employees of major corporations. They go by different titles like "policy adviser, or "political strategist", or whatever the case might be. But the fact remains that this is nothing more than an extension of the revolving door that Clinton says in eroding trust in our system.
This type of harmful influence is no less corrosive when it comes to getting someone into office than it is once they are in office. This is how a great deal of these corporate types make it into government positions, they start out working for the campaign or raising huge amounts of money for them.
I will leave you with one more quote form the Op-Ed:
At the end of the day, a lot of this is about leadership. There's an old saying in government: "Personnel is policy." Who we hire goes a long way toward determining what we do and how well we do it. We need to make sure those who do the people's work in Washington are actually doing it -- not worrying about former or future bosses at the public's expense.
Clearly the same goes for campaigns as it does for government.