Clinton and Cash

Now that Mayor Bloomberg is getting ready to spend hundreds of millions — maybe even more than a billion — of his own dollars on a presidential run that, if executed properly, would take the electoral votes of New York and California and Florida and Massachusetts out of the Hillary Clinton column and into the Michael Bloomberg column, President Clinton is suddenly coming down with the fantods about the dangers of self-financed political campaigns.

"We are very frustrated because we have a Supreme Court that seems determined to say that the wealthier have more right to free speech than the rest of us," President Clinton said in Iowa on Sunday, according to Politico, complaining that such spending violates "the spirit of campaign finance reform."

Isn't that, er, rich. Funny, we heard not a peep of complaint out of young Bill Clinton when President Kennedy, a Democrat, was joking about receiving a telegram from his immensely wealthy father, Joseph, "Dear Jack: Don't buy a single vote more than is necessary. I'll help you win this election, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide!"

Nor did we hear any complaints from the Clintons when Jon Corzine, a Democrat, spent a reported $62.7 million of his own money to get himself elected as a Senator from New Jersey. Or when Eliot Spitzer's father, Bernard, ponied up millions for his son's candidacy for attorney general. Or when John D. Rockefeller IV, a Democrat, spent millions of his own family money to buy himself a Senate seat from West Virginia, boasting, according to press reports, "I will spend whatever it takes." Or when Senator Kerry, a Democrat, funded his 2004 presidential campaign with a loan of more than $6 million against the Beacon Hill townhouse he owned with his wife, ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz Kerry. Or when Mark Warner, a Democrat, spent millions of his telecommunications fortune trying unsuccessfully to win a Senate seat from Virginia in 1996.

Democrats, it seems, can spend their own money on political speech without a whole lot of fretting from Bill Clinton. It's only when someone threatening to run against his wife as an independent starts thinking about it that Mr. Clinton gets worked up. If the Supreme Court did what Mr. Clinton wants, rich people wanting to get involved in politics would be limited to having to give money to Mr. Clinton's presidential library and foundation, like the Canadian mining magnate the New York Times reported gave $31.3 million.

As it is, self-financed candidates have no guarantee of electoral success, as the failed campaigns of Michael Huffington, Ross Perot, and Al Checchi attest. What probably is making Mr. Clinton nervous is not only Mr. Bloomberg's money but the combination of his money and his reputation for integrity, competence, and sensible centrism on the issues. Mr. Clinton may be a lot of things but he is not stupid, and his comments are a signal that the Clinton camp is awakening to the reality that a Bloomberg campaign could be a formidable threat to Mrs. Clinton's White House hopes.