Today, Peggy Noonan publishes an interview with Mitt Romney so spongy and cottony that “softball” doesn’t begin to describe it — it’s more like a Nerf ball interview. (“Do you wake up in a good mood, or do you have to work your way into it?”) This is obviously meant to show Romney in the best possible light, and to humanize him — but even so, Romney can’t help himself, and communicates this to Noonan (emphasis added):
Before rallies and town meetings, he always tries to have private, off-the-record meetings with voters. “I sit down with five or six couples or individuals and just go around the table, and I ask them to tell me about their life. And the stories I hear suggest a degree of anxiety which is not reflected in the statistics.” He is struck, he said, by the number of people who are employed but in legitimate fear of being let go. He is struck by the number of people who’ve made investments for their retirement — real estate, 401(k)s — and seen them go down.
Wait — we’ve been dealing with the effects of this financial collapse for four years, and Romney is surprised to learn that people fear losing their jobs? He’s just now figuring that out?
And though the line on Romney is that he’s relentlessly data-driven, he apparently has spent four years overlooking the fact that anxiety about job loss is “reflected in the statistics”:
* February 29, 2009: People Fear Losing Job the Most: Poll
* September 14, 2009: Lots of Fear Remains Over Economy, Job Losses, Poll Finds
* April 23, 2010: One in Five Americans Fear Job Loss in Next 12 Months
* April 24, 2012: Americans Now Fear Job Loss More Than Tanking Credit
And it never occurred to him until now that middle-class people have 401(k)s, and that they’re invested in stocks and bonds, which went down when the economy cratered? No combination of data inputs allowed him to intuit that? He didn’t know until he went among the peasants and they explained it to him?
We know Romney has claimed to understand the fear of job loss as it applies to himself. I guess he had to leave his multiple mansions to learn that these fears, and economic hardship in general, affect the common people.
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)
You know, I’m beginning to wonder if Mitt Romney is technically qualified to be President. Was he assembled in the United States? That of course is leaving aside the question of whether the phrase “natural born Citizen” should be construed as applying only to biological humans. Personally I’m inclined to take a liberal view of that one, as long as Romney is able to pass a Turing test.
Corporations are people, too, my friend!
Actually, people fear that executives from Bain Capital or some other “turnaround specialist” outfit will show up at their workplace.
This!
Poor Mitt. He’s never had it hard, so he can’t connect with people. Not a problem when you’re running Bain Capital, but definitely a problem if you’re trying to persuade people to vote for you.
It’s a common problem for the very rich. (They’re different from you and I.) Slaves and servants develop finely honed talents for gauging the interior life of their masters. It’s literally a survival skill.
But because it’s not a survival skill for the very rich and powerful, they don’t have to develop it. Absent some great personal tragedy, they usually don’t.
If you think of the privileged who’ve been elected president, most fit into the latter category:
*Teddy Roosevelt was an invalid as a child;
*his distant cousin Franklin was an invalid as an adult;
*Jack Kennedy fought (heroically)in WW II, had a brother killed in that war, had multiple, persistent physical ailments and grew up with a mentally disabled sister;
*George H. W. Bush fought (heroically) in WW II;
*George W. Bush was a mediocre student and a recovering alcoholic (which help explain his interest in education reform, and his ability to relate to people in treatment for addiction).
I’m sure Mitt has had some tough times in his life (his wife Ann certainly has with her physical health), but as best I can tell, he’s never had a prolonged experience of being laid low, of being vulnerable, of having to depend on others (physically, mentally, emotionally or financially) to make it through the day, the week, the month, the year, the decade….
It’s not surprising he’s lacking in the capacity for human empathy. What is surprising is that someone who’s been running for office for the past 20 years (and president for the past 7 1/2) hasn’t worked harder over that time to develop that capacity.
Not only has Mitt never had it hard, at Bain Mitt was the reason a lot of workers have it hard (as Boo noted above). If the Obama campaign does its job, everyone will know that Mitt is out of touch, and he’s destructive because he’s so out of touch.
Maybe it’s not something you can develop.
Yeah, maybe not. Maybe it’s one of those things that life just has to force on you.
On the other hand, if it’s not something you can work at and develop, then fully half the time I’ve spent in community organizing workshops and leadership development trainings over the years was wasted…. (A possibility, but it doesn’t seem that way when I think back on it.)