Presidential hopefuls: Did they really say that?

While I don’t want to palm myself off as a polit­i­cal ana­lyst, it looks as though the pres­i­den­tial show­down may see a face-off between Barack Obama and Mitt Rom­ney. Per­haps given this like­li­hood, vir­tu­ally every state­ment made by each man is being dis­sected in great detail to bet­ter under­stand what each might stand for over the next four years.

In the past week or so, both men have said some things that are get­ting tremen­dous expo­sure; an expo­sure that, per­haps, is incor­rectly dis­sect­ing what the can­di­dates actu­ally said. As such, it may be appro­pri­ate to exam­ine their actual state­ments and real­ize they are per­haps being misinterpreted.

For Mitt Rom­ney the quote that has come back to haunt him numer­ous times since the day after the Florida pri­mary is the fol­low­ing: “I’m not very con­cerned about the poor …” If this were the total of what Mr. Rom­ney had to say, he would likely deserve much or all of the ridicule that has been heaped upon him.

In fact, the full quote is as fol­lows: “I’m not very con­cerned about the poor. There’s a safety net there, and if it needs repair I’ll fix it. I’m not con­cerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m con­cerned about the heart of Amer­ica, the 95 per­cent of Amer­i­cans who are right now struggling.”

When taken in proper con­text, Mr. Romney’s state­ment seems rea­son­able and largely unre­mark­able. There is, in fact, a safety net for the poor, though some might ques­tion if the net remains intact and what might be the causes behind it fray­ing. Need­less to say, there is no rea­son to change pub­lic pol­icy to help “the rich” become more pros­per­ous. Of course, sim­ply because “the rich” are doing rel­a­tively well, one might won­der if that is just cause to set one’s leg­isla­tive sights on bring­ing them down a notch or two. But that’s another issue for another day.

If there is any­thing wrong in the for­mer governor’s state­ment it is his char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the size of the “heart of Amer­ica,” that is, the 95 per­cent whom he says are strug­gling. On this mat­ter, his fig­ures seem to be off the mark.

First, one would have to define “the rich” who Mr. Rom­ney is, jus­ti­fi­ably, not con­cerned about. Here def­i­n­i­tions are not clear, so let’s be very con­ser­v­a­tive and use thoughts of the Occupy Wall Street crowd who define them as the top 1 percent.

And then there are “the poor” who also raise no con­cerns given the safety net. Here, the U.S. does pro­vide infor­ma­tion, with the fed­eral gov­ern­ment indi­cat­ing that in 2010 some 46.2 mil­lion Amer­i­cans were below the poverty line. The result­ing U.S. poverty rate was 15.1 per­cent which, when added to the OWS def­i­n­i­tion of “the rich” brings us to 16.1 per­cent for whom Mr. Rom­ney shows no con­cern, or 83.9 per­cent who are, by his def­i­n­i­tion, strug­gling. And, indeed, many are strug­gling to main­tain their liv­ing stan­dards given the lack of job cre­ation over the past few years, caus­ing more and more “mid­dle” Amer­i­cans to top­ple into “the poor.” In sum­mary, poor use of sta­tis­tics, poor choice of words, but a rea­son­able sen­ti­ment by Mr. Romney.

Then there was Pres­i­dent Obama who was reported by var­i­ous media out­lets as sug­gest­ing if Jesus were to pick sides among var­i­ous tax pro­pos­als, he would be firmly behind the Obama administration’s desire to raise taxes on the rich. As with Mr. Rom­ney, the pres­i­dent was being taken out of con­text. In a speech at the National Prayer Break­fast, Mr. Obama said, “For me as a Chris­t­ian, it also coin­cides with Jesus’ teach­ing that for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.” The “it” in Mr. Obama’s quo­ta­tion above does seem to refer to tax oblig­a­tions of the rich; though the pres­i­dent is falling rather short of say­ing Jesus has already cast his absen­tee bal­lot for the Demo­c­ra­tic candidate.

Some, such as Mr. Rom­ney, might be inclined to point out that the “much” required of the rich could prop­erly be that which they give vol­un­tar­ily, not that which is taken by gov­ern­ment fiat and redis­trib­uted by politi­cians. After all, even rich peo­ple have a per­sonal rela­tion­ship with God, not one that is man­dated by gov­ern­ment tax policies.

What­ever one’s beliefs regard­ing the sen­ti­ment behind these two quo­ta­tions, over these next sev­eral months, we would all likely do well to exam­ine closely what pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates actu­ally say and then give our sup­port accordingly.

Dr. James New­ton serves as chief eco­nomic advi­sor to Com­merce National Bank and is an aux­il­iary fac­ulty mem­ber in eco­nom­ics and sta­tis­tics at OSU-Marion and OSU-Newark. Dr. Newton’s views do not nec­es­sar­ily reflect those of Com­merce National Bank or OSU-Marion/Newark.

Posted by Jim Newton on Feb 8 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.