"Too much money" sounds like an oxymoron, especially when applied to American politics. But in the last week,
Republicans are beginning to learn that lots of money can have its downside.
Thursday's story that Romney may have actively directed Bain Capital three years longer than he claimed
– a period in which Bain Capital-managed companies experienced
bankruptcies and layoffs – caps what must be the worst weekly news cycle
of any modern American presidential candidate. From images of corporate
raiding, to luxury speedboats, to offshore accounts in the Cayman
Islands, to mega-mansions in the Hamptons, this week's stories suggest
that the candidacy of
Mitt Romney – poster-boy for the symbiotic relationship between big money and the modern Republican party – is in serious trouble.
Mitt Romney and wife Ann jet-ski on Lake Winnipesaukee in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. (Photograph: Charles Dharapak/AP)
Last weekend's photos of the Romney clan on a luxury speedboat
cruising around a lake in New Hampshire, where their multimillion-dollar
compound sits, were startling in their tone-deafness. And just to make
sure the sentiment wasn't lost on anyone, at a campaign event the same
week, Obama recounted childhood memories of touring the US with his
grandmother by Greyhound bus, even the thrill of staying at a Howard
Johnson motel. In a smart political calculation, the Obamas chose to
forgo their annual summer vacation in Cape Cod (a nice upper-middle
class vacation spot, mind you, but nowhere near the same league as the
Romney estate). Instead, Obama was photographed visiting a senior
citizens' home in the battleground state of Ohio.
And the hits kept coming. Next, Vanity Fair published an article listing the
Romneys' various offshore investment accounts
worth potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in the secretive tax
havens of Cayman Islands and Bermuda, as well as a since-closed Swiss
bank account.
Democrats
stoked the predictable outrage from the revelations. On the Sunday ABC
news program "This Week", Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley thundered:
"Mitt Romney bets against America. He bet against America when he put
his money in Swiss bank accounts and tax havens and shelters."
On the same program, Bobbie Jindal, Republican governor of Louisiana, could only lamely respond:
"In terms of Governor Romney's financial success, I'm happy that he's a successful businessman."
While there is no evidence that the Romneys illegally evaded taxes
through their various offshore accounts (their secretiveness making it
impossible to tell), the reek of entitlement became overwhelming when it
was revealed that the Romneys had accumulated somewhere between $20m
and $101m in an "IRA", a tax-advantaged retirement account designed for
middle-class savers, limited to a few thousand dollars a year
contribution.
As one commenter parried,
"I may be stupid, but I ain't no fool." In other words, we might be too
stupid to understand how Romney was able to obtain all these tax breaks
legally, but we aren't fooled about unfairness of it all.
Well, at this point, you might of think that the next sighting of
Romney would be of him clothed in ash-cloth ladling out soup at an
inner-city soup kitchen. But no. Next, we were regaled with the
New York Times story of a lavish fundraiser in the Hamptons
hosted by the infamous David Koch, the billionaire benefactor of
conservative causes. The optics were worse than bad, as the the Times
recounted how one woman in a Range Rover, idling in a 30-deep line of
cars waiting for entry, yelled to a Romney aide, "Is there a VIP
entrance? We are VIP."
Romney was expected to haul in several million dollars from his trip
to wine and dine with the billionaires of the Hamptons. But why risk
confirming the very message that Democrats have been hammering upon:
that Romney is a super-wealthy elitist whose objective is to further the
interests of the 0.01%?
Certainly, billionaires for Romney would have given him those
millions without the face-time and the photo-ops, the chance to dress up
and be seen. And to be heckled by
Occupy Wall Street protesters and parodied by reporters. What is so very puzzling about the whole episode is the sheer in-your-face-ness of it.
Yet, perhaps that is the point. As a very perceptive article in the
New York Magazine, Lisa Miller describes
how new psychological research indicates that wealth erodes empathy
with others. In the "Money-Empathy Gap", Miller cites one researcher who
says that:
"The rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests
above the interests of other people. It makes the more likely to exhibit
characteristics that we would stereotypically associate with, say,
assholes."
Researchers found a consistent correlation between higher income,
management responsibility and disagreeableness. One researcher
interpreted her findings to imply that money makes people disinterested
in the welfare of others. "It's not a bad analogy to think of them as a
little autistic" says Kathleen Vos, a professor at the University of
Minnesota.
If this research is accurate (as it seems to be, replicated in
various ways by several researches), the synergies between it, the
increasing concentration of wealth and the Citizens United ruling, have
striking implications for the future of the Republican party. As Newt
Gingrich, the uber-southern politician, plaintively explained how he
lost the Republican primary: "Romney had 16 billionaires. I had only
one." The domination by the super-wealthy means that Republicans not
only have no interest in the welfare of the rest of the 99.9%, they have
no understanding of why this is a problem. The noblesse oblige
days of the old money, such as the Bushes, the Kennedys and the
Roosevelts are long gone, replaced by the new mega-money of hedge funds,
corporate raiders and global industrialists.
How else can one explain the allegiance of the Republican party to
the profoundly unpopular Ryan tax plan, which would eviscerate Medicare
and Medicaid while delivering more tax cuts to the rich? What is the
future of a party in a democracy when the powers-that-be can no longer
even understand, much less address, the welfare of the vast majority of
its citizens?
Taking the hint, the
Obama administration
is finally positioning itself on the firmly on the side of
progressives, attacking income inequality and holding Republicans
accountable for their assaults on the middle and working classes. How
ironic it would be if, after all, the other side's big money is the
answer to the Democrats' prayers.
Robin Wells is an economist and co-author, along with Paul
Krugman, of several economics texts. She has taught at Princeton
University, Stanford Business School, MIT and University of Southampton.
Robin also teaches Forrest Yoga in Princeton, New Jersey
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