IN AMERICAN public life, surprising angst is generated by the task of finding private jets for political bigwigs to borrow. The chore is easy when a big corporation makes a plane available. Some billionaires relish flying political chums around, which is even handier. But sometimes, when all else fails, flights end up being cadged from frankly unsavoury jet-owners. This does not matter much once a political leader has left office and hit the global-grandee circuit—a lucrative world of paid speeches, charity work and discreet consulting gigs. But it does if a politician still has campaigns left to run.

The private-jet conundrum sheds light on a challenge facing Hillary Clinton. Her husband Bill long ago passed through what might be termed the “money door”, cashing in his celebrity, eloquence and connections to become a rich man. Fair enough; he is a private citizen and a brilliant speaker. Unlike the Brits, who treat Tony Blair as a pariah these days, Americans do not necessarily think it outrageous that a former head of government should become rich. Mr Clinton’s allies add that personal wealth holds little interest for him. Given a pile of money, he might buy an expensive watch but that is about it, admirers maintain.

His wife’s relationship with big money is more complicated. Mrs Clinton is described—to put it politely—as intently focused on her family’s financial security. She, too, has given lots of speeches for six-figure sums. But unlike Bill, she is now attempting something hard: to reverse her passage through the money door, quit the life of the global grandee and reinvent herself as a tribune of the people. Instead of jetting to Iowa to start her campaign, she trundled from New York in a van. Even her friends thought this an unconvincing show of solidarity with the working stiff. Barack Obama joked that the economy had got so bad for some people that: “I have one friend, just a few weeks ago, she was making millions of dollars a year, and now she’s living out of a van in Iowa.”

In a recent fundraising letter to small donors she talked of her immigrant grandfather who worked as a child in the lace mills of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and thundered that “The deck is still stacked for those at the top.” Meanwhile, news outlets posed awkward questions about her family’s pursuit of wealth since leaving the White House 15 years ago. In particular she has been asked about the foreign governments and businesses that showered speaking fees, philanthropic donations and, indeed, private jet flights, on her husband and family-run charities while she served as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

Many of the questions were inspired by a fiercely disputed forthcoming book, “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich”, by Peter Schweizer. Some of the most pointed concern donations made to the Clinton Foundation, the family’s philanthropic arm, by a group of Canadian businessmen at the same time as they struck politically sensitive deals to snap up uranium assets worldwide, including a fifth of America’s uranium reserves. Their uranium holdings were later sold to the Russian state—a sale which required approval by the State Department led by Mrs Clinton. Mrs Clinton’s campaign staff say there is not a “shred” of evidence that the former secretary of state used her office to help donors. To be sure, no smoking gun has been found; but Clintonland sounds defensive.

The Clinton Foundation—which seeks to reduce childhood obesity, lower the cost of HIV drugs and other good things—has announced that while Mrs Clinton is running for office it will accept donations only from foreign governments that are already funding programmes. The foundation added that it would refile any tax returns which misreported some overseas donations, acknowledging accounting “mistakes”. This burst of interest in the Clinton family’s finances follows revelations about Mrs Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server throughout her time as secretary of state, allowing her to delete tens of thousands of e-mails as she saw fit rather than preserve them in government archives.

Mistakes were made

Republicans say all this is (fresh) evidence that the Clintons are calculating and corrupt. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, told conservative radio that he saw “every appearance that Hillary Clinton was bribed to grease the sale of, what, 20% of America’s uranium production to Russia,” and that e-mails were later erased to cover up the scandal. Democrats loyal to the Clintons closed ranks, telling media outlets that partisans are confecting allegations out of nothing, and that all charges will prove unfounded. Among diehards on the right and left, this latest fuss will probably change few minds. The approximately 40% of Americans who would not dream of voting for Mrs Clinton will scorn her a little more. On the other side, roughly 40% of Americans so dislike today’s Republican Party that talk of influence-seeking by donors in Clintonland will not sway them.

But there are Americans whose support cannot be taken for granted by either party. These include young people and minorities who only sometimes vote, as well as several million working-class whites who stayed at home in 2012 rather than vote for Mr Romney, an awkward plutocrat. Extended discussion of the Clinton family’s wealth, and whether any of it was ill-gotten, is likely to exhaust and alienate such voters. When they hear Mrs Clinton complain about bosses’ pay or money in politics, they will roll their eyes. This problem will persist even if no vast scandals are unearthed by further digging into the Clinton Foundation, or indeed into the more than $100m that the former first couple are estimated to have earned from speechifying. America has spent years listening to the Clintons defending themselves against charges of greed, and of sticking to the letter rather than the spirit of rules and undertakings. The prospect of another 18 months arguing about such things is not a happy one.