Mitt Romney, Bubble Boy

[swan_tower]

In light of Romney's self-inflicted gut wound this week, I find myself dwelling on this piece by Jeremiah Goulka, about how and why he ceased to be a Republican.

The enormity of the advantages I had always enjoyed started to truly sink in. Everyone begins life thinking that his or her normal is the normal. For the first time, I found myself paying attention to broken eggs rather than making omelets. Up until then, I hadn’t really seen most Americans as living, breathing, thinking, feeling, hoping, loving, dreaming, hurting people. My values shifted -- from an individualistic celebration of success (that involved dividing the world into the morally deserving and the undeserving) to an interest in people as people.
[...]
My old Republican worldview was flawed because it was based upon a small and particularly rosy sliver of reality. To preserve that worldview, I had to believe that people had morally earned their “just” desserts, and I had to ignore those whining liberals who tried to point out that the world didn’t actually work that way.

Goulka says a lot more, going into detail about how Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War pried the scales from his eyes, but that's the part that I keep thinking about -- because it's the only way I can make sense of Mitt Romney.

I think the man has spent his entire life in a socio-economic bubble so hermetically sealed that he doesn't even realize the world outside it exists. That's how he can see forty-seven percent of this country as moochers selfishly glued to the governmental teat, shirking personal responsibility while the virtuous men of his class keep the country going. That's why he thinks people making two hundred thousand dollars a year are middle class; that's why he can say, with a straight face, that he "inherited nothing." By his standards, those statements are true. But his standards are so skewed, the skew has completely vanished from his field of vision. He's a poster boy for privilege: carrying so much of it, and so utterly blind to the knapsack on his back.

And it means that when he opens his mouth around people from outside his bubble, he comes across as a condescending dick. It's happened again and again on the campaign trail, despite what I presume are the best efforts of his handlers to teach him less counter-productive habits; it happened on a massive scale at that fundraiser, because he never meant those words to be heard by the hoi polloi. It happens when they send Ann out to be his surrogate, because she's been living in the same bubble, a world where she and Mitt were "struggling to make ends meet" back when they were living off his stock portfolio.

During the 2008 campaign, I remember somebody writing a cute post wherein they pretended the presidential election was a piece of fanfic, and criticized it for Obama's Mary Sue qualities and the OOC way John McCain was being written, betraying all his principles in a cynical bid for the win. If 2012 were a workshop story, I'd be bleeding ink all over the page, lambasting the writer for saddling the Republican party with such an unrealistic caricature of arrogant, wealthy, self-interested self-absorption as their candidate. Because even when I can explain Mitt Romney, I have trouble believing that this really what we've ended up with.

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

The monetary requirements these days for a presidential campaign (not to mention the other offices you have to hold before you can realistically contend for the nomination) means that, sadly, the poorest of our candidates are going to be pretty well-heeled. But even with that, Obama and Romney are from different worlds, especially when you look at their early lives. (To my surprise, Clinton also had a fairly "normal" childhood, compared to a lot of our more dynastic politician types.)

The slate of candidates on the Republican side this round was . . . yeah. It's pretty obvious what happened: the more serious potentials looked at the economy (which still sucks, and will continue to suck for a while longer, a fact which will be blamed on whoever's in office for the next four years) and the influence of the Tea Party (which imposes purity tests that send independents screaming in the other direction) and thought, y'know, I'd rather wait for 2016. We were left with the third-stringers -- and with Mitt Romney, who won by default of being less scarily unstable than his opponents. But that doesn't make him a good candidate; it just makes him the last man standing.

[dunmurderin.livejournal.com]

Pretty much. It's pretty bad when my girlfriend's mom who has voted Republican for years is like, "I'm voting for Obama, he's a lot less scary."

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Actually I think if you go back through our last several Presidents, most of them come from fairly modest backgrounds -- the Bush clan excepted. Everyone else is pretty meh, until JFK. Then you have to go back to FDR. Beyond that, I lose patience. But Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Obama all range from "middle class" to "poor" in origins. (Carter seems one of the better off; "prominent businessman" father.)

By the time they run they may be wealthy -- Obama could have retired on his book alone -- but childhoods, no. "Anyone [male, and formerly white] can grow up to be the President" has some merit to it.

As for the campaigns, http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2012/Pres/Maps/Sep19.html#item-3 says Romney isn't spending his own money this time around.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I hadn't looked that far back; I was just thinking of Obama, Romney, Clinton, and the Bushes. In other words, my own political lifetime. That frame made me think the Bushes were more like the norm.