Romney the Bully isn’t the issue

This is a lengthy, well researched piece that Romney supporters are likely to instinctively recoil at, and detractors are likely to find superfluous. I’m far less interested in the alleged bullying than I am the narrative arc of Mitt’s life. He has lived in a cocoon of privilege and, not withstanding his own considerable work ethic, it’s not clear that he has the personal experience necessary to empathize and understand the plight of those less fortunate than himself. A belief in the power of hard work seems overly simplistic within the context of an elite prep school upbringing, selling stock to pay for an undergraduate education, dual graduate degrees from Harvard, and a career in debt leveraged financial restructuring. This doesn’t naturally prepare someone to appreciate the vagaries of life for those not ensconced in affluence, or the different calculus of risk for those without such a sturdy backstop, and it would only seem to reinforce the personal belief in a strict correlation between achievement and merit. The basic economic question of the election is whose agenda is more likely to provide more opportunity for those not born with the natural class advantages Mitt Romney was. The farcical carrot that we are a nation of the rich and the soon to be rich is a mirage of delusion or deception, self or otherwise. It isn’t inherently a disqualifier, but combined with his economic plan of massive tax cuts for the rich and a large scale dismantling of federal safety net programs, it’s difficult not to cross reference the political agenda with the personal history.