Clueless on the campaign trail: Column

Donald Trump interrupted himself during a speech and proudly pointed to a man in the audience. Look at “my African American,” he said. Since some state polls show Trump at 0% among African Americans, he might have been pointing at his only black supporter.

Not to be outdone on cluelessness, Hillary Clinton told us that victims of sexual assault have the right to be believed. Clinton’s husband has been accused of rape and sexual harassment, has paid almost $1 million to settle a sexual harassment claim, and was required to surrender his law license because of his lies during a sexual harassment suit. Did Hillary Clinton mean that her husband was a serial sexual predator (since his accusers should be believed), or that different rules apply to people named Clinton?

The Trump and Clinton children have inherited their parents’ lack of self-awareness. The Trump children shared a picture of themselves bearing the caption, "This is not a Republican vs. Democrat election. This is about an insider vs. an outsider.” But Trump and his family aren’t “outsiders” — they are serious insiders.

The Trump children are the third generation of an extremely rich American family. They didn’t attend public schools. They went to expensive preparatory schools (tuition $40,000 to $60,000 a year), followed by high-priced private colleges. The Clintons (among many other high-profile, well-connected guests) attended their dad's most recent wedding (where the estimated cost of the bride’s dress was $100,000 and her ring $1.5 million).

Chelsea Clinton is also a strong competitor in the clueless category. "I was curious if I could care about (money) on some fundamental level," she once told Fast Company, "and I couldn’t.” This perhaps explains why: She has a net worth of $15 million, she married a wealthy hedge fund executive, she lives in a $10 million apartment, and she had a $3 million wedding (the flowers alone cost about $250,000). Imagine what her lifestyle would be like if money really mattered to her?

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Chelsea has also held a number of lucrative positions. As one example, she serves as a board member of the IAC/InterActiveCorp. (which pays her about $300,000 a year for a part-time job, not including stock awards). It's hard to disagree with The New York Times blogger who said Chelsea got the board position (at the age of 31) “only because she is the daughter of” the Clintons, in an appointment  that "defies American conceptions of meritocracy." Similar comments have been made about her other well-paid endeavors. Chelsea says of herself, when explaining her career trajectory, that she “will always work harder than anyone.”

Trump tells working-class Americans the system is rigged against them. Nothing demonstrates the sincerity of his fight against a rigged system more than his naming of children Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr. as executive vice presidents of the Trump Organization.

Hillary Clinton speaks of the need to create greater opportunities for all Americans. Nothing shows her commitment to equality of opportunity better than naming her daughter to the Clinton Foundation board, making her vice chair of the foundation, and at one point even renaming the foundation as the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

Both candidates’ families are examples of much that is wrong with America, and why we no longer lead the world in equality of opportunity.  An academically high-performing child from a poor family stands less chance of graduating college than an academically underperforming child from an affluent family. Stanford (where Chelsea went) and the University of Pennsylvania (where Ivanka went) are fine schools. But children from the bottom economic 50% of American society (and I mean smart children who have what it takes) are underrepresented at these elite private universities. And college is key to getting a high-income job as an adult.

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Affluent families engage in what’s known as “opportunity hoarding” — a fancy way of saying all the special possibilities available to the Trump and Clinton children (and children like them) are possibilities not easily available to ordinary Americans.

The Trumps, the Clintons and most members of our elites (left and right) show a startling lack of self-awareness of the role socioeconomic privilege has played in their success. Both the Trumps and the Clintons surround themselves with members of their own social class, which might explain why both presidential nominees are so clueless.

I’m not suggesting, however, that the two nominees' lack of self-awareness presents a false equivalence between them. Judging by his campaign and career, Trump would be an incompetent, corrupt crony capitalist, racist demagogic president. As Michael Bloomberg remarked: “Trump says he wants to run the nation like he's run his business. God help us.”

At worst, Trump could be a real threat to our democracy. Clinton, in the worst case, at least knows the issues, knows how to make things work, and is not an incompetent racist — which in this election makes her the safer and better choice.

Steven Strauss  is the John L. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs & Co. Visiting Professor at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Follow him on Twitter: @Steven_Strauss

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