THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

After losing the presidential election in 1960, Richard Nixon suffered with a lot of regrets. He had lost an election which he could easily have won if he had not made any one of many errors he made during the campaign.

So Nixon lost the $100,000 a year job as President of the United States. He had to take a job with a California law firm that paid a million or so a year. This was in 1960, when a million a year was more like ten million today. And Richard Nixon was not a rich man.

Despite the fact that he made ten times as much as he would have if he had won the 1960 election, nobody has any real difficulty understanding why Nixon was so upset at losing the lower-paying job. A million a year as a lawyer does not compare to $100,000 a year as President of the United States.

Yet you hear people who are trying to sound like Hardened, Practical Men (the world's dumbest collection of people) saying, "Well, it's all about money."

Money is like water. If you have plenty of it, you forget it exists. But if you're poor or thirsty, money or water is your universe.

It was routine for me in Washington to listen to some guy whose private sector income had been a million or so complaining about losing an appointment as Deputy Assistant Undersecretary in some executive department. The appointment he didn't get paid a hundred grand or so, max.

They had money. They wanted power.

No, in Washington it's not all about money. New York is about money, DC is about power. When you can buy all the swimming pools you want, power becomes more important to you.

When you have money, you want power. That is one of several reasons that the Bill Gates' and the Martha Stewarts' are so often leftist. Martha Stewart lately blamed all her problems on the "vast right-wing conspiracy."

Bill Gates' father recently fought any reduction in the inheritance tax. It was a routine part of his lifelong liberalism.

Money means a lot more to the average American than it does to the billionaires. Bill Gates was worth $120 billion when the NASDAQ was hitting 6000, and he was worth $43 billion at last report.

I don't usually share any information about my personal finances, but I have to admit something here. If I had just lost $77 billion I would be in very bad shape. Yet no one expects Gates to jump out of any tall buildings.

So at the cocktail parties that are so important to Bush or Media Opinion, money is a lowly thing.

Lots of Europeans and other pinheads are moaning that America is planning to invade Iraq for the oil. That's supposed to be Evil.

But as I pointed out on August 24, 2002, The Only Moral Justification For War Today Is Oil.

Actually the last thing Bush is going into Iraq for is to break the world monopoly on oil production set up by OPEC. It hurts the average American, but it makes no difference to Bush.

All the people whose opinions matter to the circles Bush travels in couldn't care less about how much a family has to pay for gasoline and all petroleum by-products that drive up the average cost of living.