Poor Romney's so clueless about the needy
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Mitt Romney may not be the most callous candidate who has ever run for president, but he is surely the most out of touch.
Everything about the GOP frontrunner screams awkwardness around those in lower income brackets. Ironically, most Americans earn less money but are in higher tax brackets than Mitt "Mr. 15 Percent" Romney.
Like a lot of out-of-touch rich guys who are throwbacks to the Gilded Age, Mr. Romney is blissfully unaware of how contrived he appears to ordinary people. It isn't just his vast wealth that separates him from most of his fellow Americans; it is also his unadulterated strangeness. Why would any self-respecting presidential candidate break into a weirdly syncopated version of "America, the Beautiful" just because he won a primary by outspending his competitors?
Mr. Romney also cuts a particularly goofy figure because he's noblesse oblige without the noblesse or the oblige. Sure, the most jagged edges of his personality have been shaved off to make him more appealing to the sweaty masses, but his ruthless condescension continues to shine through. His phoniness is literally painful to watch.
Mr. Romney's latest gaffe -- confessing to lacking concern for the very poor because "they have a safety net" -- is destined to become a classic in Freudian self-immolation. One day, Mr. Romney can take his place in the Clueless Plutocrats' Hall of Fame, where fellow inductees Scrooge McDuck, Mr. Monopoly and Thurston Howell III can sneer at his obliviousness from lower pedestals.
Mr. Romney's gaffes are of the variety that consistently peel back the contours of what he truly believes. His campaign quickly squawked that his comments to CNN were taken out of context. It's hard, however, to feel sorry for the candidate who ran a deceptive ad in November quoting President Obama quoting Sen. John McCain saying, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose," as if they were the president's own words about his record.
At the time, the Romney campaign was proud of itself for distorting Mr. Obama's comments. His advisers even bragged to the media about ripping Mr. Obama's quote out of context. As much as they would now like to argue that Mr. Romney has become a victim of the politics of false equivalency, it doesn't help them even when the comment is heard in context.
First Published February 3, 2012 12:00 am
