There are lots of things that can be said for or against Romney's candidacy, but it has at least one attractive feature—it provides a direct test of Obama's theory of how to win an election. A central feature of Obama's political strategy has been what his critics refer to as class warfare—attacks on the rich, with the implication that they are taxed at lower rates than other people (pretty clearly not true) and ought to be taxed at higher.
It looks like a sensible strategy. It appeals to people's desire to think well of themselves, and so to believe that those who have been more successful got that way through, at best, luck and do not deserve their (possibly ill gotten) gains. It also appeals to the very natural desire to get something at someone else's expense—hence Obama's repeated claims that he will deal with budgetary problems entirely at the expense of very rich taxpayers.
Most voters are not rich, so one might expect them to be persuaded. On the other hand, the midterm elections and current polling numbers suggest that a lot of them are not.
For an experiment on how well that particular strategy is likely to work in the U.S., Romney is the ideal test bed. He is very wealthy. He got his money not by writing best selling novels, being a sports or movie star, or inventing and marketing new and obviously useful high-tech gizmos, but by buying and selling companies, an activity that few voters are likely to identify with and one easy for the other side to present in an unflattering light—as the other side, of course, has been doing.
If, despite that, Romney wins, it will be good evidence that the strategy does not work very well in present day America. Which would, I think, be good news.
No comments:
Post a Comment