TF

Most American presidents were quite well-off by the time they decided to run. When they weren’t, some group of very wealthy supporters often did something about it, as when a bloc of Gilded Age magnates recapitalized William McKinley just before the 1896 election.

Indeed, a classic nineteenth-century formula was for major Eastern interests to take advantage of the steady westward march of the frontier and search out someone born in a log cabin who they knew very well — Lincoln, the railroad attorney, was a perfect example. Then, with a straight face, they would run him as a “man of the people,” with most newspapers playing along.

Exceptions prove the rule: Samuel Tilden, the Democratic nominee who was probably counted out in 1876 by a bipartisan agreement that embraced the Pennsylvania Railroad, was known as the “Great Forecloser,” for his work on behalf of New York banks.

That said, the optics of Trump perhaps facing off against Michael Bloomberg do rather boggle one’s mind. The first impression is overwhelming: US elections are becoming like soccer matches, in which teams owned and operated by billionaires battle it out while ordinary citizens cheer from the sidelines.

But to pick up on your question directly, I think the influx of the superrich as candidates reflects the media bubbles of our new Gilded Age. Even after the 2008 financial collapse and the advent of “single-payer” insurance for high finance, billionaires continue to be worshipped in public.

There are a host of reasons for this. The major media are now mostly directly owned by one or another of them, with private equity firms expanding rapidly into the sector, especially the new online media companies.

Facebook, Google, and other tech firms also exercise massive direct and indirect influences on communications. Leaders of think tanks, NGOs, and educational institutions spend much of their time holding out begging bowls, while leaders of most foundations have little or no critical distance from their funders. A whole circuit of affluently supported “thought” has grown up for audiences of the superrich and journalists with, in my view, often mediocre intellectual standards. I will refrain from the obvious reason why most political leaders just join the jubilant chorus.

As a result, the superrich live in a bubble. The absence of criticism convinces many that they are geniuses and that they possess some special insight denied to ordinary mortals even in fields about which they know next to nothing. Just look at the wave of nonsense a few years ago about how easy it would be to transform education through “disruptive” technology. If you study the shocked reactions to Elizabeth Warren’s and Sanders’s policy proposals, you can see how many of the superrich at first could hardly believe they were being criticized. Before they became angry, they were dumbfounded.

Since the most important ingredient in getting ahead in politics is money, you can see what happens. They’ve got plenty of it. Some percentage inevitably cannot resist the temptation to plunge into politics. But we are still talking very small numbers here. Most of the Forbes 400 are not running for anything, though virtually all donate directly or indirectly, often on a colossal scale. In this respect, not much has changed. New Gilded Age or old Gilded Age, it’s pretty much the same — the voice of the people is usually the sound of money talking.

There is another factor, though. A fair number of candidates and politicians, such as former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, go back and forth between the public and private sectors, becoming very wealthy in the process. That also reflects the reality of how much money can be made out of politics nowadays. The Clintons, Tony Blair, Gerhard Schröder, and other leaders are exceptional, but they are far from alone.