News that Bill and Hillary Clinton purchased the property adjacent to their current home in Chappaqua, NY, isn’t particularly good PR. Buying a $1.16 million third home while campaigning to appeal to economically struggling Americans (just five weeks before an election) looks like bad decision-making.
The optics, as they say, on the purchase aren’t good. But there are three reasons the Clinton’s new house purchase can be seen in a more positive light.
- It would have been easy for the Clintons to have someone else purchase the property, and then sell it to them after the election. The fact that they purchased it openly shows transparency in their conduct, something Clinton foes often criticize them for not displaying.
- Whereas a $1.16 million is clearly a lot of money, Clinton’s opponent Donald Trump owns far more residences than the Clintons do — -and nearly all of them are larger and more expensive.
- But it’s not just Trump: every modern US president from LBJ through George W. Bush has owned more property than the Clintons, even with their new purchase expanding their primary residence’s real estate by 1.5 acres. (Richard Nixon’s former Western White House was priced at $75 million in 2015.)
