Does this make Romney capable of understanding the economic woes of most people? Possibly - FDR came from great wealth - but we're not off to a great start.
President Obama emphasized these tax inequalities in Tuesday's State of the Union speech while Warren Buffett's secretary - who pays a higher tax rate than her billionaire boss - sat with the first lady.
We root for athletes, musicians, and actors, because we relate to their rapid accumulation of wealth, as if anyone can suddenly become a star. Hence the surfeit of reality star-making shows. Buffett and Bill Gates (as well as the late Steve Jobs) enjoy popularity because they project being average guys while being nothing of the sort. Stiff, coiffed investment bankers are another matter.
In recent years, tensions among the classes have become strained due to multiple causes: an inequitable tax code, soaring executive compensation regardless of company performance, stagnant or decreasing workers' wages, a permanent class of unemployed or underemployed skilled workers, the subprime mortgage and attendant housing crises, the Occupy movement, and the Citizens United decision, which allows the rich to donate millions to super PACs aligned with candidates. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson have injected $10 million into Newt Gingrich's Winning Our Future PAC.
Gingrich, born in humble circumstances, has adapted to the better life, paid $1.6 million as a "historian" by Freddie Mac while maintaining a $1 million credit line at Tiffany's. As a former Gingrich strategist says in the New Yorker: "Callista did not want him to run for president. That's why he had to buy her so much damn jewelry."
