Don't Be So Hard on Romney

Now would be an easy time to jump on Romney, to talk about his lack of compassion or ability to relate with average Americans-- as if it were something we had just become aware of.  The truth is it is very hard for any of us to be compassionate of those we have no experience with and whose stories we have never had to relate to.  
 
I genuinely think that Romney can’t be empathetic or compassionate to poor people the way that I can’t be compassionate to people who abuse the elderly. I have no experience with the need to beat, humiliate, or yell at grandmothers and therefore can’t really show those who do have that need any compassion or worry about their well-being. I’m not comparing the 47% of Americans Romney was referring to as elder abusers, but I think to Romney they could fall into the same category: people he has no experience with or understanding of and therefore has no compassion for.

Romney has never lacked a social safety net because his family and Mormon (not Christian) community have always been there to catch him. He has no experience with financial and social insecurity. He’s not evil; he is just naively fortunate. I don’t spite him for that. I just don’t believe it leaves him well-equipped to govern a nation which is overwhelming compromised of hard-working people who have not had the same good fortune. That 47% may have had opportunities provided by the government– public education, a social safety net, etc. And perhaps many of us have felt that we are entitled to those things. But no more so that Romney has assumed that he is entitled to the advantages that he has been given.

The point is: Romney has no experience with leading a family, a company, or a state through a financial crisis without being able to walk away with his financial security intact at the end of the day. His entitlements have never been threatened.  Why should he be able to successfully see us through this fiscal crisis, which has no safety nets? In this time of deep cultural, social, income, belief-based, and political division, in a world where people will kill those who represent us in the streets because they find us so abhorrent– how could he possibly be expected to show character and will in the face of such challenges when he has always had the ability to opt out of such difficult situations?