Running From Millions
By FRANK BRUNI
NYT
COLUMBIA, S.C.
FRESH from his triumph in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney bounded onto a stage here last week in a sport jacket, which was unusual for him, and an open collar and jeans, which are the norm. Casual dress is part of his financial camouflage. It doesn’t scream $200 million man.
Voters aren’t fooled. I checked with those assembled to hear his remarks, and even undecided ones who weren’t fully familiar with him knew that he was rolling in it. They were also unsurprised by that.
“Isn’t pretty much everybody who runs for president wealthy?” said Wendy White, 49, a schoolteacher, making affluence in politics seem as foreordained as height in professional basketball — which it almost is. “In an ideal, utopian society, we’d like someone who knows what it’s like to struggle as a teacher or a working mom. But Republican or Democrat, they always have money if they end up in the White House.”
And Republican or Democrat, they often go to laughable lengths to play that down. A recurring theme from just about every election cycle is the economic altitude of candidates who insist on playacting that they’re less loftily removed from the so-called common man than they really are. Time and again we’re treated to a comedy of manners with predictable pratfalls and a clear take-away: although there has long been a significant economic disparity between the rulers and the ruled, neither group can get entirely comfortable with it.
(More here.)
NYT
COLUMBIA, S.C.
FRESH from his triumph in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney bounded onto a stage here last week in a sport jacket, which was unusual for him, and an open collar and jeans, which are the norm. Casual dress is part of his financial camouflage. It doesn’t scream $200 million man.
Voters aren’t fooled. I checked with those assembled to hear his remarks, and even undecided ones who weren’t fully familiar with him knew that he was rolling in it. They were also unsurprised by that.
“Isn’t pretty much everybody who runs for president wealthy?” said Wendy White, 49, a schoolteacher, making affluence in politics seem as foreordained as height in professional basketball — which it almost is. “In an ideal, utopian society, we’d like someone who knows what it’s like to struggle as a teacher or a working mom. But Republican or Democrat, they always have money if they end up in the White House.”
And Republican or Democrat, they often go to laughable lengths to play that down. A recurring theme from just about every election cycle is the economic altitude of candidates who insist on playacting that they’re less loftily removed from the so-called common man than they really are. Time and again we’re treated to a comedy of manners with predictable pratfalls and a clear take-away: although there has long been a significant economic disparity between the rulers and the ruled, neither group can get entirely comfortable with it.
(More here.)
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