Eric Schmidt, Google, and the Hillary campaign

In April 2014 Eric Schmidt, the Number 3 at Google (though Sheryl Sandberg might disagree), sent his thoughts about how to organize Hillary’s campaign to Cheryl Mills, John Podesta, David Plouffe, and Robby Mook. It’s deeply revealing of the attitude of our masters toward the serfs who make their empires possible. Consider this, from the party that's always yammering on about the minimum wage: “Its important to have a very large hiring pool (such as Chicago or NYC) from which to choose enthusiastic, smart and low paid permanent employees” (emphasis added). That’s right: concerns about a living wage are for others, throwaway lines for the campaign trail.

But the brilliant Mr. Schmidt suffers from a touching naïveté. Consider the first entry under “The Rules”: Its important that all the players in the campaign work at cost and there be no special interests in the financing structure. This means that all vendors work at cost and there is a separate auditing function to ensure no one is profiting unfairly from the campaign. All investments and conflicts of interest would have to be publicly disclosed. The rules of the audit should include caps on individual salaries and no investor profits from the campaign function. (For example, this rule would apply to me.) “No special interests … all vendors work at cost … a separate auditing function … no one is profiting unfairly … conflicts of interest … publicly disclosed … caps on individual salaries … no investor profits.” Eric, are you dreaming? Did you think you were writing to the local Baptist church? You’re talking about rules for a Clinton campaign! Though I must admit, “unfairly” is a nice touch, leaving Hill and Bill plenty of wiggle room. I can almost see the twinkle in Bill’s eye and hear his gravelly, elder-statesman voice: “It depends on what the meaning of ‘unfairly’ is.” Henry Percy is the nom de guerre of a writer in Arizona. He may be reached at saler.50d[at]gmail.com.