"Chelsea Clinton will start a six-figure consulting job after she receives a master's degree from Oxford University later this year, Newsweek magazine reports on its Web site...Clinton, 23, accepted the position Friday after she reportedly turned down McKinsey's offer of $100,000 a year to work at its London headquarters, according to the Web site."

When will the day arrive when a politician's standards for how American citizens should live rivals their own personal standards for how they (and their own families) live?  Did Chelsea at age 23 understand hard work?  Does she today at 26?  How many people finish master's degrees and start a job paying six-figures?

Maybe this proves that money alone does not buy elections.  If Hilary needs to pander this desperately two and a half years before the election (and more than two years before the Democratic convention), it may mean that the field is much more open than most people think.

Or maybe it is yet another example of the alternate universe many politicians live in, largely devoid of any semblance of the world in which most Americans live.

President Bush revealed today that he is worth up to $20 million, Vice President Cheney up to $94 million.

Bush likes to win points with his "average Joe" persona, but an East Coast Andover/Yale/Harvard elite can fantasize for much longer than most people.  It is all make believe, just like their view of the world.  The same is true for Hilary.  It takes real courage to criticize "kids" she believes expect to make $50,000 right out of school while her own daughter made over $100,000. Many politicians seem to be a part of an elite class that does not want anyone else to join them.  Which is why so many Congressional policies, from tax cuts to bankruptcy reform and even to Medicare benefit the wealthy so disproportionately: the only people they know are people just like them, so to them, they are passing bills that help all Americans.  Their friends make fortunes and the rest get left with the bill.  It's one way to run the country.  Into the ground.