These narratives about family and hardship are designed to position extremely powerful people who enrich themselves via public office as victims. It's a bizarre affect. Working for Google and Goldman to help a poor family might be a necessary choice, but it doesn't make you good.
https://twitter.com/SonalRShah/status/1335317095178006528
The revolving door is a tricky problem. I am not opposed to working in business and government. But Google and Goldman have been massive beneficiaries of government aid and being honest about that instead of whining about purity would go a long way.
https://twitter.com/SonalRShah/status/1335097002850471936
No one is free of conflicts. Academia and nonprofits have extremely weird politics that can be brutal, and civil servants can be petty tyrants. The problem is systemic corruption for 40 years flowing through elite institutions that goes unrecognized.
I don't care what's on your resume, I care whether you've stood up to concentrated power on behalf of the republic. I don't care if the person who breaks up Google once worked at Google. But usually those kinds of people don't argue *for* the revolving door.
Thurman Arnold was the greatest antitrust enforcer in American history, and he later founded Arnold and Porter. Robert Jackson took on the most powerful robber baron in America, and he had been a corporate lawyer. FDR grew up rich. Et al.
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