With upwards of 40 million dollars of his own cash sunk into his campaign, Mitt Romney dropped out of the Presidential Race today. Inside, he must be wondering if it had been a wise investment.
For 40 million, you think he would have bought California or at least New Jersey. Instead he ended up winning the two states he and his father had governed, Utah a gimme state for a Morman candidate and a handful of other states, most of which have higher animal than human populations. For someone touting his business credentials, he’s a little fuzzy on the concept of return on investment (bang for the buck to you and me).
Which brings me to the question of how candidates like Romney get taken seriously in the first place. It goes to the American character. We admire the rich. We somehow think that they must be smarter than the rest of us. We believe that if someone’s made a fortune then they must be competent at all things. We ignore all the jobs Romney lost while running companies into the ground. We only see the money he was able to get away with for himself. Furthermore, we ignore the basic truth than excelling in business and excelling as a government leader are two different skill sets.
As for me, if I have any bias, I must admit I am completely turned off by self-financed candidates. I think it has to do with my upbringing. In our family, we had more of a European point of view. Namely, unless we were one of them, we did not trust the rich. We viewed the rich in many instances as simply more lucky than us or better connected. The evidence told us we were right.
When you think of the long history of Europe it makes a lot of sense. In old Europe, your lot in life was often determined way before you’d ever been conceived. You either had a silver spoon or you didn’t. And if you were born to wealth, you seemed destined to only get more richer in your lifetime. Sadly, America is becoming more like old Europe. John Edwards will explain…
My family understood that the rich have it plenty good in America. Despite the easy target of social entitlements for the poor or middle class, we knew not the fall for that old diversion. While everyone’s up in arms about spending money to insure poor kids, the truth is America does much more for its rich than its poor.
America is a great place to be rich. America should be business friendly. We must continue to make it a country where people have the ability to rise and fall based on their own abilities. This is after all what brought my family to this great nation. But, as with anything, there’s a limit. We need to work on closing the ever widening gap between the rich and poor in this country.
Maybe when that’s done, I’ll believe a sob story from a guy wiping away his tears with 100 dollar bills.
2 Comments
February 25, 2008 at 11:57 am
[...] a gimme state for a Morman candidate and a handful of other states, most of w… source: Does Mitt Romney Really Understand How America Works?, Full Contact: Sports, Politics & [...]
March 20, 2008 at 2:23 pm
[...] a gimme state for a Morman candidate and a handful of other states, most of w… source: Does Mitt Romney Really Understand How America Works?, Full Contact: Sports, Politics & [...]