You really can't? It wouldn't be that having tons of $ is not enough and power is what they seek? Why do you think they run for office? Only being VP or Senator doesn't give anyone the power to do whatever a person wants to do. They want more power, enough to exercise complete and total power over the country of their birth and the people who reside in it.
"They mouth the usual platitudes of fairness and say they champion the poor and I think they really believe this is true."
So does Hugo Chavez, and just like Hugo, they know that the poorest, most uneducated people are the ones they can fool into giving them the power they desire without the need to raise an army of their own for a military takeover.
Well, yes, of course they want power. But what I find really counter intuitive is why people whose ancestors rose from immigrant to billionaire by dint of education, frugality and hard work (which is true of the people I knew), would throw that away in favor of policies that those very ancestors fled in order to find freedom.
One could argue, probably correctly, that capitalists also want power. So do those who champion liberty.
There are all sorts of poor people. Many of the Caucasian, Christian, rural poor are fiercely independent. Many under- educated folks have lots of common sense and know that there is a price to pay for being *given* something. I found, listening to the heirs of power, that they used the idea of the poor and the idea of fairness to gloss themselves in idealism because their real appeal was to the idealistic, young, comfortable, educated middle class.
I have come to the conclusion that there is some sort of familial personality disorder at the root of all this. I spent time with some of these people, knew their children, met their parents and they were not just evil power mongers at any cost. They were, actually, sort of pathetic and vulnerable. People who had everything, including the expectation of leadership, without the first clue as to what to do with it. They could buy positions of leadership through donations/grants, but could not lead, most likely because they have a really imperfect vision of where they are going themselves.
This is not true, IMO, of Soros and Strong and the other top tier manipulators. Those people are manipulating the other billionaires, not just the peons. They are the ones I think you describe perfectly. I believe they also made their own money and rose to wealth through any means possible, at anyone else’s expense, if necessary.
It is like a giant pyramid scheme with the same results. Only the people at the very top and a select few middle managers ever benefit. Everyone else is simply lunch.