Running for president is about one thing: eating at diners.
A candidate for president must be an expert in the proper ordering of a local Iowan pork tenderloin sandwich, an authentic New Hampshire corn chowder and South Carolina barbecue (always with a Carolina Gold yellow mustard sauce). One can only imagine the expenditures this requires.
Yet, post tax return release, chances are that Mitt Romney could buy every single diner he has visited over the course of his campaign. (He makes enough money in a day to pay for a year at AU.)
Presidential candidates spend millions of dollars to appear to be “just like one of us,” a middle class, hard-working citizen. Poor was never so chic.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the average wealth of a senator was $13.2 million in 2010 and $5.9 million for a representative.
But the real wealth is in the presidency.
From George Washington to Obama, the Oval Office has been filled with some of America’s richest men.
Washington owned five farms with over 3,000 slaves and is estimated to have been worth $525 million.
Hoover had a $75 million dollar mining fortune.
Historian Edward Pessen estimated that more than half of all presidents were in the top 3 percent of society.
Yet the poorest presidents, whose wealth were less than $1 million, hold some diamonds in the rough. Who could forget Lincoln, Truman and Wilson?
In the 2012 election, we have a front-runner Mormon candidate, a falling adulterer candidate, a rising evangelical candidate, an OB/GYN candidate and (of course) a socialist candidate. But what the 2012 field lacks is a Poor Man’s Candidate.
While Ron Paul’s and Barack Obama’s wealth pale in comparison to the rest of the field, they have never felt poverty in their adult lives. They haven’t had to navigate the complex web of food stamps, unemployment benefits, welfare, Medicaid or simply search for employment (even though Romney claims he has been concerned about getting a “pink slip”).
What if, instead of a gang of men who shoot 18 holes every Sunday at a country club, America had to choose from their caddy, vale, or busboy? What if, instead of a Financial Sense candidate, there was a Street Sense candidate?
The Oliver Twist of candidates would be dropped off at campaign stops by a friend or relative, wearing an off-color (tan or olive perhaps) suit — without a tie of course. They would read speeches from 3 by 5 notecards, and their rhetoric, instead of being lofty, would be more along the lines of a Subway sandwich: somewhat unidentifiable meat along with a healthy lathering of an assortment of dressings.
Their talking points would argue for jobs of any color (green or un-green), a bureaucracy that works (who knows what the Department of Interior, Commerce or Agriculture really do?) and some place safe to sleep.
Arguments about deficits, debt ceilings, earmarks, House ethics, socialism and judicial appointees wouldn’t really matter when getting food on the table is life’s biggest challenge.
Say the Poor Man is elected, would State Dinners be held at IHOP? Unlikely. But the whole mindset of the Chief Executive would change.
Polls, political brinksmanship and partisan hackery would be trumped by a genuine and honest search for solutions for the majority of the electorate, who are unfortunately not multi-millionaires.
That isn’t to say that a Poor Man’s President would be a success (or a failure for that matter), but perhaps it would be oddly reassuring to know that one of us, not just a rich person pretending to be one of us, could use the bully pulpit to preach Street Sense values instead of statistically calculated talking points.
Lincoln guided the country through its most trying times, all while having almost no money in his bank account.
Now, more than ever, we need a change to our system, the era of millionaires is over, and in its place, the era of the poor man can begin.
