Rich Does Not Equal Out-of-Touch
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Economy, McCainIs anyone else amused by two rich guys accusing each other of being rich? On the heels of Barack Obama’s ad that calls John McCain out-of-touch because he owns seven homes, McCain has released an ad calling Obama a spendthrift who doesn’t have to worry about a personal budget.
This campaign season has officially entered the farcical stage.
If you want to be accurate, no senator is “in touch†with the common American. Their lives are wildly divergent from ours. Then again, my life as a freelance writer in South Texas is wildly divergent from that of a West Virginia coalminer or a Silicon Valley executive. But I’d like to think we can still all find common ground rather than turning what makes us different into reasons to distrust one another.
I could care less how much a candidate is worth. I care about their policies. You don’t have to be poor to help the poor. And you don’t have to be middle class to understand the middle class. To imply otherwise is ridiculous.
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August 22nd, 2008 at 10:35 am
Alan,
Well said.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:06 am
But it sure helps, Alan. So I guess I am suggesting otherwise. And its not ridiculous.
It is simply common sense to think that the more shared experiences one has with another, the better each will be able to understand the other. I have yet to see much evidence for the contrary assertion.
Do you think that you really understand what it means to be a woman if you are a man, or to be a man if you are a woman? Or what it means to black if you are white, or white if you are black? If you are “other” then your understanding is bound to be imperfect and incomplete. To suggest otherwise is what is truly absurd.
I cheerfully grant that either McCain or Obama can cobble together some understanding of middle class folk, but that understanding will be imperfect and incomplete. And further, anyone who is middle class has every right in the world to feel that the candidates lacks a well-developed understanding of their lives. I find it insulting if you are in fact suggesting otherwise.
Obviously American voters are not spoiled for choice. The final nominees for POTUS have almost invariably been quite well-off. And if you are merely suggesting that this ought not to be anything like a dealbreaker, Then I agree. I think it’s a very important part of being an American to value the ability and willingness to imagine walking a mile in the other person’s shoes.
I’m happy to have the choice we have in 2008, as I regard both Obama and McCain to be well-above-average options. And I believe that they understand the nation as a whole well enough to be President. But do I think either of them really understands what it means to be middle-class, to say nothing of being poor? Not by a longshot, buddy, not by a LONG shot.
I believe I have the right to notice this, and I believe that I am right to notice it. I think it takes an act of willful opaqueness to FAIL to notice it.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:27 am
kranky,
While Obama is well off now, I wonder (I don’t know) about his economic situation growing up with his single mother. I’m suspecting that his station has improved somewhat after performing at the top of his class at Harvard.
alan,
After seeing charts like this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/09/ST2008060900950.html
I find Obama much more credible on “being in touch with the middle class”. Of course I suspect you’d call it a “hate the rich” policy :).
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:32 am
Obama isn’t rich Alan, he only made four million, he needed another million to be rich, he’s just a poor black man asking for change, lol :D
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:55 am
Agreed that rich does not necessarily equal out of touch, but in McCain’s case, he is both. I think the line of argument is legit, because McCain has tried to pin the elitist label on Obama, so it seems fair game for Obama to respond in kind.
Of greater concern to me than McCain’s many mansions, however, is McCain’s being out-of-touch in other ways. His many gaffes, his slowness to process compound questions, his inability to remember how many houses he owns, and his tendency to forget and then refute things he himself has said, all are indicative of a man not in command of the facts.
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Ya I was under the impression that Obama was “self-made” when it comes to being well-off, as opposed to having family money. Hell I’m not even self-made. I was lucky enough to end up in a decent if not outrageously well off family. Even if I followed the same path, I could never claim to be self-made.
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Haha, we were well beyond that point many months back in the primaries. :-)
But let’s make a distinction. McCain has been incredibly wealthy for about 30 years. And we’re talking about the type of wealthy where you never have to worry again. I don’t begrudge him this, but to say he’s just as likely to be in touch with the needs of the middle class as Obama is being INCREDIBLY generous to McCain.
On the other hand, Obama has been well off for about 4 years. That’s about it. And it’s because of book sales. Before then, he and his wife weren’t doing bad, but they weren’t “rolling in it” by any stretch of the imagination.
The truth is, Obama has been vastly closer to the middle class experience than McCain has ever has been, especially the current middle class situation. The last time anybody could argue that McCain was part of the middle class was maybe when he first got married in 1965.
In any event, just some background here. Because while I agree with your premise that being rich doesn’t exactly make you out-of-touch, it certainly doesn’t make it more likely you’re in-touch…and when comparing the two candidates, there are stark differences when it comes to making the “in touch” case.
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:27 pm
I absolutely agree that “you don’t have to be middle class to understand the middle class”
But, you have to want to understand the middle class (or poor). McCain has shown time and time again that he is out of touch and has made no effort to get in touch.
The economy is doing fine, later modified to a bumpy patch.
His remarks–while wearing a flak jacket and surrounded by a hundred soldiers on top of it–that Iraq is perfectly safe.
We need to drill for oil because poor big oil doesn’t have anywhere to drill when it has 70 million acres begging to be touched.
What housing crisis?
The man is demonstrably out of touch. That is the issue here, not that he is rich.
He just like Bush, lacks empathy for the people he wants to lead.
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:34 pm
This idea that a politician has to be “close” to the middle class, or the poor, or whatever socio-economic group you might want to pick and has to “understand” them is, quite honestly, silly.
What matters isn’t where a candidate comes from, but what he or she believes in.
Unless all of you calling John McCain out of touch also want to admit that Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and John F. Kennedy were similarly “out of touch”
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:10 pm
“On the heels of Barack Obama’s ad that calls John McCain out-of-touch because he owns seven homes…”
And can’t remember that one, simple number: seven.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Doug, you are completely wrong. FDR, while wealthy, understood and had empathy for the middle and lower classes. He spoke to them on a level that very few have ever done. Lyndon Johnson spoke for and to the middle and lower class as well as the discriminated against. The programs and ideas these men pushed and supported clearly shows that.
Kennedy, I’ll grant, had perhaps less of connection living the life he did, but
he at least seemed to connect with people, to inspire something in them.
So wealth does not preclude one from empathizing with the mainstream of America.
Lack of desire does.
McCain, the son of an admiral, a navel academy brat, a wreckless pilot, a POW who garnered special treatment if you ask some vietnam vets, a callous man who abandoned his first wife, someone who married into affluence and ha pretty much worked as hard as he could to enter the elite class–this is a man who cannot speak to or for a group he no longer recognizes and if he had ever had any connection, has worked hard to run away from it.
Oh, and Rachel, actually, he owns 11…4 are investments….you are soooo out of touch.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Of course it is, Doug. It is also totally UnAmerican and contrary to very ideals of freedom, prosperity & the pursuit of happiness. But this is the bastion of democratic marxism, cultural & economic. It is about identity politics – be it black, or poor, or left-footed, or ancestoral. This is the big joke about Obama being post-racial & above politics as usual, exc. Any “Hope”(TM) that Obama may bring certain does not come from an idea, or a set of ideals, or a coherent, comprehensive world view that he is willing to express. The “Hope”(TM), the “Change”(TM) is rooted in his nebulous, shape-shifting Identity-politics. He doesn’t transcend identity-politics, he is merely a very effective cameleon.
Obama has made this very clear. What he believes in is: Obama. He believes in his judgment, his style, but most importantly, his Identity. This is why he gets mocked as “the One.”
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Gerry,
McCain’s out of touch.
So is a certain Senator from Illinois who things that economic hardship means having to shell out a few more bucks for arugula.
Neither of these men would be where they are today if they weren’t already part of the elite class and thus, by definition, out of touch with the rest of America.
Which is why this entire discussion is pointless and the counter-charges the campaigns are throwing back and forth entirely irrelevant.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:51 pm
John Kerry would have been the first billionaire president. But that’s Ok. He spoke to the middle class on a level that very few have ever done. Did I mention he was a Democrat?
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Jimmy,
You’re kidding right ?
Kerry lost mostly because he could never come across as anything other than the Massachusetts liberal that he was.
There’s a reason that didn’t play well in places like rural Ohio.
August 22nd, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Kranky … would it have been better to say “…to have an understanding of the middle class”? I mean, it kinda sounds like you’re saying I should have no reason to trust anyone who is not a 30-something, middle-class white guy from San Antonio because anyone else is incapable of understanding my life. That’s not a feasible way to go about life or politics. I assume you were just making a point that it’s ok to be cautious of politicians who claim to understand XYZ group even though their personal situations are vastly removed from XYZ. That, we can agree upon. I didn’t say it wasn’t ok for voters to be suspicious, just that it’s ridiculous for two rich guys to try to inflame those suspicions, particularly when it comes to wealth.
But, overall, the point is that being rich in no way disqualifies you from the presidency — there has to be some evidence that a candidate is “out of touch” other than the amount of cash they have in the bank (and, no, not knowing how many homes you own, when several are investment homes and your wife handles the investments, is not good evidence).
Whether or not either man understands the middle class or the poor is a whole other matter and one I expressly did not touch on in this post. This post just addresses the absurdity of two rich guys using wealth as some kind of litmus test for how “in touch” the other candidate is with the masses.
I rejected that kind of b.s. when it was used against Kerry and I reject it being used against Obama or McCain.
August 22nd, 2008 at 2:45 pm
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
The takeaway isn’t that McCain is rich. I think every voter accepts that the people who make serious runs for the presidency — if not just about every elected office — have some money in the bank.
No, the point that’s implied — especially to low information voters — is that McCain doesn’t know nor seem to care how much he spends per month on his mortgages.
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Rich Does Not Equal Out-Of-Touch…
Alan Stewart Carl, a moderate blogger, writes: “Is anyone else amused by two rich guys accusing each other of being rich? On the heels of Barack Obama?s ad that calls John McCain out-of-touch because he owns seven homes, McCain has released an ad cal…