“A Disagreeable Human Being”: Mitt Romney, The Unlikable Presidential Candidate
It’s been a long time since the country elected a man as personally unappealing as Mitt Romney. Will Americans overlook their deeply held conviction that he’s a jerk?
Very few votes are going to be cast on the basis of what Mitt Romney did or didn’t do to John Lauber in 1965. So that, per se, isn’t Romney’s problem. But this is: The story lands as another brick on pile of evidence amassing that he’s just a disagreeable human being. A few days ago I wrote about Barack Obama’s biggest problem, which is that despite all the many areas in which Americans rate him higher than Romney, the one on which they give Romney the edge happens to be pretty important: handling the economy. Now we get to Romney’s biggest problem. The likability factor. He ain’t got it. And he ain’t got much of a way to get it.
Historical question: When is the last time the clearly less likeable candidate beat the clearly more likeable one for the White House? The answer is, a long time. I put the question to Gallup, which didn’t have historical numbers at hand. But doing some noodling around on my own suggests that you have to go back to 1968 to find such a result.
In 2004, George W. Bush generally led the likeable category. Pew emailed me some numbers—they had Bush leading John Kerry on likeability by 47 to 36 percent in September 2004. Interestingly, Kerry caught up and even went ahead after the first debate. But even so, voters judged both very likeable—70 percent for Kerry, and 65 percent for Bush. In 2000, Bush usually topped Al Gore, but not by massive margins. An October 2000 poll gave Bush an 11-point margin. Pew had a nine-point margin for Bush around the same time.
Before then, numbers get a little harder to come by. But crusty old Bob Dole was surely not considered more likeable than Bill Clinton in 1996. The 1992 Clinton-George H.W. Bush matchup was probably close. But just think back over the elections. The “wooden” Michael Dukakis in 1988 wasn’t exactly radiating intense bonhomie. Ronald Reagan was extremely likeable on a personal level to most people. Jimmy Carter had that big smile in 1976. Et cetera. As I say, I would imagine that it’s 1968, when the surly Dick beat the Happy Warrior, although by just a half million votes out of more than 70 million cast. But even Nixon was probably not clearly less likeable than Humphrey. After all, he’d been the vice president, he’d been on the national stage for nearly 20 years; the man definitely had his backers.
Romney, though? This is the biggest washout of modern times, folks. Gallup just this week put the likeability ratings at Obama 60, Romney 31. It’s not that Obama’s number is unusually high. Look back at those Kerry-Bush numbers. Americans are an open-hearted lot, at least presumptively, so they want to like the guy who’s going be the president. But they Do. Not. Like. Mitt. Romney.
It would be more interesting for all of us if there were some great mystery here, but there isn’t. He reeks of privilege. Every time he says something off the cuff he says something obnoxious. Corporations are people, pal. I like firing people. Where on earth did you get those Godforsaken cookies?
He also—and this actually is interesting, because it’s something our normal public discourse does not like to admit or allow for—is way too rich. We’re constantly told that Americans don’t have any class envy, and compared to some European nations they don’t. But even Americans have limits. A few million, even $50 million; okay. But a quarter billion dollars? A house with an elevator . . . for the cars? It also matters to people how the money was made. It’s okay to be worth a gajillion dollars if you’re Bill Gates or Steve Jobs and have made everyone’s lives more interesting and cooler. But what’s Mitt Romney done? Helped give us Domino’s Pizza.
Even so, Romney might still pass muster, but he has no grasp of the one crucial reality of class in America: you can be filthy rich as long as you don’t look or act like it. Gates doesn’t comb his hair, much. Jobs wore sneakers. Romney just looks too pressed. Even when he’s wearing those jeans. You can look at Romney on television and practically sense how he smells—of costly ablutions whose brand names the rest of us probably don’t even know. And he acts relentlessly rich.
And this brings us back to the Cranbrook School incident. We might have learned from The Washington Post this week that Romney gallantly interceded on poor Lauber’s behalf. Or even, maybe, that he did the awful deed, but a few years later he got in touch with Lauber to say, “Gee, old scout, went a bit overboard there.” Or even that he acknowledged to one of his confederates that he regretted the incident. In other words, we might have learned something that showed he knows he behaved like an asshole. But all we learned is that he behaved like an asshole and is now pretending to forget it. A jerk is one thing. But a jerk who takes no responsibility for his jerkitude is pretty much the definition of an unlikeable person.
No human being is one dimensional. I’m sure there are plenty of people in the world for whom Mitt has performed kindnesses. I expect we’ll be getting to know every single one of them in these next few months, too, in heavily filtered television ads in which the men wear proletarian flannel and the women’s St. John blazers are kept safely in the closet. All I can say is they’d better be more likeable than their candidate—for his sake. In the meantime, there’s something very reassuring about this country reposing in those numbers, that the black guy with the weird name who’s been called everything under the sun is twice as likeable as the rich white guy. This is the America that drives the wingers crazy, but that the rest of us—the majority—live in, and love.
BY: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, May 13, 2012
“An Unlevel Playing Field”: Lifestyles Of The Rich And Politically Connected
Mitt Romney made the case last week that young people looking for opportunities and success should rely on their parents’ wealth. If your folks don’t have much in the way of disposable income, well, good luck.
To drive home the significance of the Republican candidate’s vision, consider the tale of Tagg Romney, the former governor’s oldest son.
The New York Times had a fascinating report this week on Tagg getting together in 2008 with Spencer Zwick, a Romney campaign fundraiser, to create a private equity fund called Solamere Capital.
Neither had experience in private equity. But what the close friends did have was the Romney name and a Rolodex of deep-pocketed potential investors who had backed Mr. Romney’s presidential run — more than enough to start them down that familiar path from politics to profit.
Two years later, despite a challenging fund-raising climate for private equity, Solamere, named after a wealthy enclave in Utah’s Deer Valley where the Romneys have a winter home, finished raising its first fund. The firm blew past its $200 million goal, securing $244 million from 64 investors, including a critical, early $10 million from Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, and hefty commitments from wealthy supporters of the campaign.
There’s no reason to think Solamere Capital did anything wrong. Rather, the point is, Tagg Romney, despite having no background in private equity, partnered with someone else who had no background in private equity, and they were able to put together a very successful financial operation, thanks in large part to Tagg’s father’s wealth, his last name, and Republican donors who probably assumed Mitt Romney would run for president in 2012.
Adding an interesting wrinkle to the story is the fact that Romney’s Solamere Capital invested in Allen Stanford’s Stanford Financial Group in 2009, hiring several of the firm’s employees. Stanford, of course, is now incarcerated, after getting caught running a $7 billion Ponzi scheme.
Stanford’s former employees, who became Tagg Romney’s employees, have been accused of ignoring widespread fraud, though Tagg says the staff wasn’t with Stanford long enough to learn of the boss’ wrongdoing.
Of course, the larger significance is what the story tells us about the Romney vision of economic opportunity.
To hear Tagg tell it, his political connections were irrelevant. “Our relationships with people got us in the door, but that did not get us investors,” he told the Times.
Paul Waldman offered a more compelling perspective.
Does Tagg Romney actually believe that his dad had nothing to do with his successful entry into the private equity game, and the millions he has made and will continue to make are the result only of his own merit? That his life is radically different from those of the millions of people struggling to get by only because they don’t work as hard as he does, or have his gumption and entrepreneurial spirit? Maybe he does. That may strike you and me as utterly insane, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit. […]
There are a thousand ways in which wealth determines the opportunities available to you, in large part by making things easy. Yes, if you’re a poor kid being raised by a single parent who never finished high school, you can get to Harvard. But you’re going to have to be one in a million. It’s going to take extraordinary spirit, determination, and luck for you to make it. I’m sure Tagg Romney is a fine fellow, but the truth is that even if he was a lazy dolt he’d still do well. He went to the best schools, his parents gave him all kinds of enriching experiences, and he never had to worry about much of anything. He wasn’t going to get pulled out of college and have to take a job if one of his parents got sick. When he decided this private equity thing looked interesting, there was an escalator waiting, and all he had to do was hop on. That’s opportunity.
Well said.
Look again at what Mitt Romney said last week, while talking to college students, after condemning President Obama for an imaginary “attack” on “success”: “Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.”
In the Republican’s mind, this actually constitutes a vision of opportunity. If you work hard, get into a good school, but can’t afford the tuition, Romney believes you’ll have the opportunity to find some other college with cheaper tuition. If you’re innovating, come up with an idea for a new business, but can’t afford the start-up costs, Romney believes you’ll have the opportunity to ask your parents for money they may or may not have.
It’s not the job of public institutions to create a level playing field; it’s the job of individuals to find an unlevel playing field and “take a shot.”
It worked out well for Tagg Romney, right?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 2, 2012
“Plutocracy, Paralysis, Perplexity”: The Distorting Effects Of Great Wealth On Our Society
Before the Great Recession, I would sometimes give public lectures in which I would talk about rising inequality, making the point that the concentration of income at the top had reached levels not seen since 1929. Often, someone in the audience would ask whether this meant that another depression was imminent.
Well, whaddya know?
Did the rise of the 1 percent (or, better yet, the 0.01 percent) cause the Lesser Depression we’re now living through? It probably contributed. But the more important point is that inequality is a major reason the economy is still so depressed and unemployment so high. For we have responded to this crisis with a mix of paralysis and confusion — both of which have a lot to do with the distorting effects of great wealth on our society.
Put it this way: If something like the financial crisis of 2008 had occurred in, say, 1971 — the year Richard Nixon declared that “I am now a Keynesian in economic policy” — Washington would probably have responded fairly effectively. There would have been a broad bipartisan consensus in favor of strong action, and there would also have been wide agreement about what kind of action was needed.
But that was then. Today, Washington is marked by a combination of bitter partisanship and intellectual confusion — and both are, I would argue, largely the result of extreme income inequality.
On partisanship: The Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have been making waves with a new book acknowledging a truth that, until now, was unmentionable in polite circles. They say our political dysfunction is largely because of the transformation of the Republican Party into an extremist force that is “dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” You can’t get cooperation to serve the national interest when one side of the divide sees no distinction between the national interest and its own partisan triumph.
So how did that happen? For the past century, political polarization has closely tracked income inequality, and there’s every reason to believe that the relationship is causal. Specifically, money buys power, and the increasing wealth of a tiny minority has effectively bought the allegiance of one of our two major political parties, in the process destroying any prospect for cooperation.
And the takeover of half our political spectrum by the 0.01 percent is, I’d argue, also responsible for the degradation of our economic discourse, which has made any sensible discussion of what we should be doing impossible.
Disputes in economics used to be bounded by a shared understanding of the evidence, creating a broad range of agreement about economic policy. To take the most prominent example, Milton Friedman may have opposed fiscal activism, but he very much supported monetary activism to fight deep economic slumps, to an extent that would have put him well to the left of center in many current debates.
Now, however, the Republican Party is dominated by doctrines formerly on the political fringe. Friedman called for monetary flexibility; today, much of the G.O.P. is fanatically devoted to the gold standard. N. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard University, a Romney economic adviser, once dismissed those claiming that tax cuts pay for themselves as “charlatans and cranks”; today, that notion is very close to being official Republican doctrine.
As it happens, these doctrines have overwhelmingly failed in practice. For example, conservative goldbugs have been predicting vast inflation and soaring interest rates for three years, and have been wrong every step of the way. But this failure has done nothing to dent their influence on a party that, as Mr. Mann and Mr. Ornstein note, is “unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science.”
And why is the G.O.P. so devoted to these doctrines regardless of facts and evidence? It surely has a lot to do with the fact that billionaires have always loved the doctrines in question, which offer a rationale for policies that serve their interests. Indeed, support from billionaires has always been the main thing keeping those charlatans and cranks in business. And now the same people effectively own a whole political party.
Which brings us to the question of what it will take to end this depression we’re in.
Many pundits assert that the U.S. economy has big structural problems that will prevent any quick recovery. All the evidence, however, points to a simple lack of demand, which could and should be cured very quickly through a combination of fiscal and monetary stimulus.
No, the real structural problem is in our political system, which has been warped and paralyzed by the power of a small, wealthy minority. And the key to economic recovery lies in finding a way to get past that minority’s malign influence.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, May 3, 2012
“From Politics To Profit”: The Republican Opportunity Society
Whenever the subject of inequality comes up, conservatives usually say the same thing: Barack Obama wants equality of outcome, while we want equality of opportunity. The first part is ridiculously disingenuous, of course—no one could honestly argue that Obama’s major goals, like raising income taxes from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, would bring us to some kind of pure socialistic society where everyone has precisely the same income and no one is wealthier than anyone else. But the second part is, I think, offered sincerely. Conservatives not only seek a world where everyone has the same opportunities, most of them think that’s pretty much what we have already, so major changes aren’t necessary, except in the area of getting government off your back. After all, this is America, where any kid, no matter where he comes from, can achieve whatever he wants if he’s willing to work hard. Right? Which brings me to the story of Tagg Romney.
Today’s New York Times has a story about the private equity firm Tagg and the chief fundraiser from his dad’s 2008 presidential run started after that campaign ended, called Solamere Capital. They didn’t do anything illegal or unethical, so it isn’t an exposé of wrongdoing or a potential problem for the current Romney campaign, just a somewhat interesting tale about how “that familiar path from politics to profit” works. But here’s the portion that jumps out. Though neither of the two original founders had any experience in private equity, using their contacts among people who had donated to the Romney campaign they quickly found investors who gave them $244 million to play with:
Solamere’s founders dispute any notion that they have cashed in on their political connections, arguing that Solamere, like any fund, has had to persuade investors on its merits.
“No one we went to as an investor said, ‘Oh, your dad is Mitt Romney, I’m going to give you $10 million,” Tagg Romney said, noting that his father’s political future was uncertain when the firm began. He added, “Our relationships with people got us in the door, but that did not get us investors.”
Even so, Mitt Romney was the featured speaker at Solamere’s first investor conference in Deer Valley in January 2010. Mr. Romney, who made his fortune in private equity at Bain Capital, also gave early strategic advice.
Does Tagg Romney actually believe that his dad had nothing to do with his successful entry into the private equity game, and the millions he has made and will continue to make are the result only of his own merit? That his life is radically different from those of the millions of people struggling to get by only because they don’t work as hard as he does, or have his gumption and entrepreneurial spirit? Maybe he does. That may strike you and me as utterly insane, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit.
I’m not privy to the private conversations among folks like Tagg, but in public anyway, it seems that conservatives have become particularly vehement in defending inequality since the meltdown of 2008, insisting that in America, there is no such thing as privilege, money comes only from merit, wealth is a sign of virtue, and if we raise taxes a smidge on those at the top of the income ladder, we’re only “punishing success.” Repeat that to yourself and others often enough, and you can easily come to believe that we really do have equality of opportunity. But true equality of opportunity is actually nearly as radical an idea as equality of outcome. True equality of opportunity would mean that every public school would be equally good, for instance. But of course they aren’t—people with means move to towns with good schools precisely so they can give their kids more opportunity than other kids get.
There are a thousand ways in which wealth determines the opportunities available to you, in large part by making things easy. Yes, if you’re a poor kid being raised by a single parent who never finished high school, you can get to Harvard. But you’re going to have to be one in a million. It’s going to take extraordinary spirit, determination, and luck for you to make it. I’m sure Tagg Romney is a fine fellow, but the truth is that even if he was a lazy dolt he’d still do well. He went to the best schools, his parents gave him all kinds of enriching experiences, and he never had to worry about much of anything. He wasn’t going to get pulled out of college and have to take a job if one of his parents got sick. When he decided this private equity thing looked interesting, there was an escalator waiting, and all he had to do was hop on. That’s opportunity.
So when conservatives begin arguing that we don’t want equality of outcome, just equality of opportunity, look closely at what it is they’re arguing against. More often than not it’s the most modest of efforts to make things a just a bit easier for people who aren’t at the top. Not a full scholarship to an Ivy League school, just some student loans you’ll have to pay back. Not free nose jobs, just a guarantee of health insurance, so you know you won’t lose your home if you get sick. Not enough money to buy that Cadillac, just a minimum wage high enough that you’ll be able to feed your family. Not anything like real equality of opportunity, in other words. But even that is too much.
By: Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, May 1, 2012
“A Horrifying Worldview”: The Endless Arrogance Of Wall Street
The super wealthy apparently believe that they deserve constant deference.
Greg Sargent is rightfully stunned by the entitled petulance of Wall Street bankers who are shocked—shocked—that President Obama would do anything other than praise their indispensable brilliance:
Wall Streeters are so upset about Obama’s harsh populist rhetoric that they privately called on him to make amends with a big speech — like his oration on race — designed to heal the wounds of class warfare in this country. […]
Of course, their exaggerated weariness notwithstanding, the “wounds of class warfare” haven’t been borne by Wall Streeters, who remain fabulously wealthy even after causing the worst downturn since the Great Depression. If there’s anyone waging class warfare, it’s the radicalized representatives of the rich, who have successfully engineered government to enhance their wealth at the cost of our shared responsibilities. As such, the actual victims of class warfare are the ordinary Americans who face stagnant wages, rising costs, and a tattered safety net.
After going through the insanity of Wall Street complaints, Sargent ends his post on this note:
One wonders if there is anything Obama could say to make these people happy, short of declaring that rampant inequality is a good thing, in that it affirms the talent and industriousness of the deserving super rich. It certainly seems clear that they won’t be satisfied until he stops mentioning it at all. [Emphasis mine]
If you think the bolded section is an exaggeration, you should take some time to read Adam Davidson’s New York Times profile of Edward Conard, a former partner at Bain Capital—Mitt Romney’s investment fund—who now works as an apologist for the ultrawealthy. Conard believes three things. First, that millionaires and billionaires earned every penny of their wealth through merit and hard work:
God didn’t create the universe so that talented people would be happy,” he said. “It’s not beautiful. It’s hard work. It’s responsibility and deadlines, working till 11 o’clock at night when you want to watch your baby and be with your wife. It’s not serenity and beauty.”
Second, that immense wealth is the just reward for any and all risk taking:
“It’s not like the current payoff is motivating everybody to take risks,” he said. “We need twice as many people. When I look around, I see a world of unrealized opportunities for improvements, an abundance of talented people able to take the risks necessary to make improvements but a shortage of people and investors willing to take those risks. That doesn’t indicate to me that risk takers, as a whole, are overpaid. Quite the opposite.” The wealth concentrated at the top should be twice as large, he said.
And finally, that extraordinary income inequality is a net plus for society. Those who use their wealth for charity, Conard argues, are depriving the world of investment and gain:
During one conversation, he expressed anger over the praise that Warren Buffett has received for pledging billions of his fortune to charity. It was no sacrifice, Conard argued; Buffett still has plenty left over to lead his normal quality of life. By taking billions out of productive investment, he was depriving the middle class of the potential of its 20-to–1 benefits. If anyone was sacrificing, it was those people. “Quit taking a victory lap,” he said, referring to Buffett. “That money was for the middle class.”
For those of us who don’t see wealth as the ultimate end, who see value in other, non-monetary pursuits, and who understand the power of chance and fortune, this is a horrifying worldview. Conard seems oblivious to the fact that there are people who work hard—punishing their bodies with physical labor—in order to scrap by with the basics of life. It’s not that these people are lazy, it’s that they didn’t win the cosmic dice game that put them in a position to reach the heights of American society.
There is a disturbing corollary to Conard’s worldview, that he expresses in his conversation with Davidson—if the wealthy are supremely virtuous for their pursuit of wealth, then those who reject that choice—regardless of what they do—are unworthy of our respect or admiration:
Conard, who occasionally flashed a mean streak during our talks, started calling the group “art-history majors,” his derisive term for pretty much anyone who was lucky enough to be born with the talent and opportunity to join the risk-taking, innovation-hunting mechanism but who chose instead a less competitive life.
Given their friendship and close connections, one thing to consider is whether Mitt Romney holds views close to Conard’s. Judging from his domestic policy plans—huge income tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, combined with tax cuts on investment income, and a dramatic reduction in social services—the obvious answer is yes, of course he does. And indeed, at the end of his profile, Adam Davidson offers the strong suggestion that Romney’s thinking has more in common with his friend than it does with any of us.
BY: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, May 2, 2012
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