We keep hearing that Romney is a moderate, but his economic policies make Reaganomics look like socialism
An old photograph of Mitt Romney has surfaced and, understandably, both liberals and conservatives are disgusted. Taken in 1966 by the Associated Press (and dug up by Buzzfeed), it shows a 19-year-old Romney rallying in support of the expansion of the Vietnam war and the military draft. The current Republican frontrunner would later win a draft deferment on the grounds that he was a Mormon missionary. Like George W Bush and Dick Cheney, Romney is a rich man who loves war as long as someone else is doing the fighting.
We can – and should – judge Romney by the content of his character, but if our judgment ended there, it would be a shame for thinking people. Isn't this a structural failing, as well as a personal one? After all, Romney wouldn't have been able to dodge the draft if it weren't for the implicit power of the American class system.
As you know, the dominant myth of this country is that we're all equal even when some of us are clearly more equal than others. It hardly needs mentioning that if you're the son of George Romney, a governor and former corporate chief executive, you have friends in high places far, far away from Indochina. And it hardly needs mentioning that most of those 58,000 working-class teenagers killed in Vietnam did not.
Yet, Romney is able to say with a straight face that President Barack Obama's economic policies are plainly meant to incite "class warfare". Just before he won the Iowa caucuses last week, he told a small audience that Obama aims to "substitute envy for ambition and poison the American spirit by pitting one American against another".
I know. Envy, right? And ambition! Neither is going to help when you're chronically overworked or underemployed, or upside down on your mortgage or trying to get the health insurance company.
The idea of unity is also hard to take from Romney, the former head of Bain Capital. That Wall Street firm looted companies and laid off thousands of workers. To him, if deregulation and low corporate taxes result in the 99% fighting over crumbs, well, that's the just the free market. If we start wondering why corporations aren't paying their fair share, well, that's getting downright divisive. Or worse, socialist.
Speaking of which, let's make one thing clear. Obama's economic policies, no matter your politics, saved American capitalism. There was enough panic in the air that he could have nationalised the banks, as they did in Europe, Iceland and Great Britain, but he didn't. He could have made the stimulus three times as big (as some passionately urged him to do), but he didn't.
If he were a socialist, he'd push for an 83% tax on top earners, which, according to a new study (pdf), wouldn't hurt much. If he were a socialist, he'd at least attempt to argue that establishing such a rate is justifiable, because individual income above $1m a year is just greed.
But Obama would never do that, because he's a true believer in old-school Reaganomics. Anyone not blinded by the fact that he's the first African American president of the United States can see that.
You'd think Romney would have a plan for establishing a level playing field from which hardworking Americans, armed with pluck and determination, would be able to reach for the stars. But he doesn't. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Romney's $6.6tn tax plan would save the middle class an average of $1,400 per household while saving the 0.001% an average of $171,000. Before you say, "the rich earn more so save more," consider this: Romney's plan adds $600bn to the deficit in 2015. Who's going to pay in three years' time? You already know the answer.
When it comes to shared sacrifice, some share more than others. The American ruling class has always had a knack of persuading the 99% that the 1% are not the ruling class. This is America, after all. If I'm rich and powerful, it's because I earned it. It has nothing to do with being born into wealth, influence and social standing. Only a socialist would think otherwise.
Three decades of neoliberal economic policy have calcified this view, and if the 2012 presidential contest is about anything, it should be a referendum of those failed policies. Wealth does not trickle down – no matter how many times Romney and other Republicans insist it does. While Obama has offered too few remedies, Romney is offering more of what got us here: cutting taxes for "job creators" who don't create jobs. In other words, Romney is a rich man who loves capitalism as long as someone else does the losing.
"We would never be on this path if it were not for George Romney," said Romney's wife, Ann, during the Iowa caucuses. She meant that her father-in-law, the former governor of Michigan and head of American Motors, was an inspiration to her husband.
Even so, I'm sure that's true in more ways than one.