Privileged as Presidential Material
"Michelle and I, we've been in your shoes. Like I said, we didn't come from wealthy families. When we married, we got poorer together. ... We only finished paying off our student loans about eight years ago."
It was, of course, Mitt Romney, "born with a silver spoon" in his mouth, not Barack Obama. Although Mr. Obama did all right, and so did Michelle. Ivy league educations, and opportunities galore because they represented the aristocracy of the black community in the United States. She, a high-powered lawyer, and he a state senator, both pulling in a respectable income. Not your average middle-class couple.
Their income last year was fairly hefty; not many voters who will cast ballots for President Obama earn in the neighbourhood of two, two-and-a-half million. Of course, Mr. Romney's wealth is considerable. But while he started off from a grandly funded point, he also used his business sense to earn the $250-million he is now worth. And the simple truth of the matter is, it takes a whole lot of money to get anywhere in American politics now.
Another truth: the gap between poor and rich is growing exponentially. And, sadly, the middle-class is diminishing as some of the former middle-class is now joining the poor. Unemployment is an ill that has not yet recovered its former health. And if the strategy to imply that Mitt Romney, the Republican-candidate-adversary for the presidency cannot engage with nor understand the needs of the public who are anything but wealthy, is to work in Mr. Obama's favour, it's a thin thread indeed.
It's not as though the scions of wealth have never before sought public office and attained to the highest office in the land. Franklin Delano Roosevelt came from a wealthy background and he became a much-celebrated president. And the Kennedy clan had a succession of might-have-been presidents after the death of John F. Kennedy. And then more recently there was oil-rich George W. Bush, after his father G.H.W. Bush.
But it does have some potential value, to be sure, to sell that story to the voting public. There are an awful lot more voters among the poor - if they can be encouraged to get out there and vote and forget about lethargy and procrastination - than there are wealthy voters. And President Obama more or less inherited the sagging economic outlook that led to the depression.
Not his fault entirely that rising health-care costs, diminished housing values and 8% unemployment persists. He has blamed the previous administration and that is certainly partly true, although his decisions and choices were more aligned with Wall Street than Main Street in attempting to drag his country's economy back into a position of recovery.
His story about his and Michelle's student loans will have resonance with current students for whom Congress will extend a program limiting interest rates on student loans. President Obama knows all about that kind of pressing need. A need that Romney supports as well, but he cannot present a story of sympathy from personal experience.
And since all's fair in political debate, class warfare is currently on the agenda.
Labels: Economy, Political Realities, Poverty, United States, Values
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, April 26, 2012
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