Donald Trump: "Why do you want to be president?"

Why do these sons ( of rich) run for office? Their fathers, those who made the fortunes through reliance on their own initiative and enterprise, certainly did not seek political preferment. Why do the sons go in for politics? There are several answers to this question, none of which is completely satisfying. Some psychologists maintain that their urgency derives from a guilt complex; feeling that they have no right to the wealth they inherited, that this wealth was ill-gotten, they have a compulsion to alter the system whereby their fathers or grandfathers accumulated this abundance. For, it is noted, they are all socialists and look with abhorrence on the capitalistic system; or, at least, they act as if they do when in office; they are all for leveling schemes and propose measures that will, if pursued, destroy all profits from enterprise, if not enterprise itself.

Then there is the power-complex theory. These boys have had pretty much their own way since birth, have become satiated with the things that their economic power gave them, and are looking for new worlds to conquer. They yearn for political power for its own sake, not for any increase in economic power, which they have always enjoyed. And so, they spend their millions to buy political office; and when they are in office they give of the taxpayers' money not because of any sympathy for the "underprivileged," but because they have learned that by giving they buy votes, without which their tenure in office is jeopardized. And staying in office, continuing to exert power over people, has become the only reason for existence; without political power they would have to lead the humdrum life of enjoying their inherited wealth.

Then there is the theory advanced by G. K. Chesterton that the rich are really radical, that they are always in the forefront of new fashions, in thought as well as in customs, while those to whom the business of existence is a full-time job are for letting things alone. There is some historic support for this theory. The Gracchi brothers did much to introduce the New Deal in ancient Rome and they came from wealthy surroundings. The Protestant Reformation could not have got going without the support of well-heeled princes. It was the barons of England who induced King John to sign the Magna Carta, not the hoi polloi. And our own American Revolution was sponsored by men of means, while a peer of the realm, Lafayette, was a prominent leader of the French Revolution.

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