So isn’t that very much different from “I like to fire people”?
IOW, we all like the fact that if we hire a mechanic to work on our car and he does a shoddy job, we can “fire” him and go to a different mechanic.
Liking the fact that you have the choice to go to a different mechanic doesn’t mean that you like the personal anguish the first mechanic goes through over the loss of business.
“Like BEING ABLE to fire people” /=/ “Like firing people”
I didn’t get the sense of personal anguish over Romney’s “humorous” story regarding the closing of a whole fucking factory, and how his dad tried to avoid the topic while running for Governor.
He also doesn’t seem to understand that the vast majority of people don’t have the option to fire their insurer, they get what their employer makes available. He may as well tout the free market system because it lets one buy as many vacation homes as you want.
Oh, I agree that Romney has a serious problem with his “humorous” stories and they definitely make him seem out of touch. His handlers need to do some serious work on that.
But really all they do is confirm the fact that he is rich, which everyone already knows, and absolutely doesn’t understand what a paycheck to paycheck person goes through. He never had to pull money out of savings into checking so that the bills would clear before payday, and everyone knows that. How could he? I’m sure that JFK didn’t either.
My only point was the “I like to fire people” statement was false and his point was well taken.
Don’t you?! I’m sure that story involved a lot of personal anguish! (None of it experienced by anyone named Romney.)
Sorry, yeah, it looks like I screwed up the quote. I got lazy and didn’t look it up, mostly because I didn’t think it particularly mattered for the question, but I definitely got it wrong.
To anyone other than a millionaire, “firing” as a descriptor of choice is probably not the analogy that comes to mind. Perhaps someone might say “I like being able to choose between eating or paying my rent…”. With public healthcare, one no longer has the options of “eating, paying rent or paying medical bills”, so it’s a severe restriction on the American patriot.
Of course he has never personally had the experience of being poor. That’s not the problem: that’s probably true of most politicians. The problem is that he has no idea of what it’s like. Most politicians, even being born in a comfortable socioeconomic bracket, at least grasp the concept that there are people who were not so lucky, and have learned, at least second or third hand, at least something of what that means. But Romney has somehow managed to be so insulated from the real world that he doesn’t even know that.
Yeah, but I don’t tend to tell people that, it makes me sound cruel and callous. Instead I say “isn’t it great that there are so many good mechanics in my neighborhood, so if one offers disappointing service, or non-competitive rates, I can use a different one.”
i.e. leave off the first part of the quote, Mitt, it makes you sound cruel and callous. And that is where Mitt is out of touch. He doesn’t translate the word “fire” into “something negative that might happen to ME.” Which a lot of his audience does. He thinks of it as “an option I have when interacting with others that, if I take it, will provide me with long term benefits.”
Yes, he did have a valid point to make and no, he didn’t say those exact words.
His problem is that he chose to phase his point in a way that was severely tone-deaf. Right or wrong, he should have recognized that that comment would not make for a sound bite which would resonate well with the average American. It was not a horrible gaffe, nor was the story about his father closing the factory a horrible gaffe. But the OP is pointing out that there’s a pattern here which suggests Romney is woefully out of touch with the working class, and I would tend to agree with that.
Most people don’t begrudge the mere fact that he’s wealthy, but that he doesn’t appear to grasp any single aspect of what it’s like to *not *be wealthy.
Additionally, ordinary people aren’t in a position to “fire” their insurer when it gives them the shaft – at that point, the victim is typically up to his eyeballs in debt from arbitrarily denied medical claims, and unable to pay another insurance company to take him even if he could find one willing to do so.
Yeah. A lot of these arguments fail to touch on the fact that health insurance is freakin’ expensive, and most people, if they weren’t getting it through their employer as a benefit, wouldn’t be able to afford it all. That’s why a lot of people chose to go even without COBRA when they’re in between jobs - even though COBRA offers the group rate your employer is paying which is typically less than what you’d pay on the open market.
Even if they have another job lined up, a lot of people still take the risk of going, say, 90 days without insurance (which is how long it takes at my workplace for new employees’ insurance to kick in), becaue COBRA is still way too expensive.
So, yeah, the notion that most people are going to “fire” their insurance company because they’re receiving less than optimal service is ludicrous. It’s either go with what your employer gives you or do without.
You kinda have to feel sorry for Romney, because I think anyone who has been so far removed from the concerns normal people have, for the duration he has, is going to be out of touch. Even middle-class people would have to make an effort to truly understand what it’s like to be poor. It’s really just a shame he has decided to not embrace that distance rather than pretend he is a normal guy. It’s also sad that people would want a “normal guy” to be the President.
That said, my favorite Romney story is as follows:
Such a tortured existence he must lead.
Oh my god. I may actually start to like him. I have a fatal weakness for tortured puns.
The problem with Mitt and the “fire people” anecdote, to put it another way: 99% of Americans are fire-ees, not fire-ers. And “fire” is anathema to them.
If the Republicans go with Romney, and it seems like they will, I don’t see how they will be able to slam Obama for any personality flaws. Any weakness that Obama has on that front, Romney has a million fold.
The same could be said for just about any Republican in the running, but especially Romney.
Yeah, that too. A long time ago Molly Ivins wrote a column about George H.W. Bush. It was partly praising him and Barbara for being decent polite well-mannered people. She the remarked on how vile (by the standards of the day, he couldn’t even raise an eyebrow now) he could be on campaign.
She drew the conclusion that he didn’t think the things one said while campaigning counted in a real way.
Or that’s how I remember it.
He comes across as completely clueless to me. He really just has no idea that he has no idea.
Has he ever not been wealthy?
That’s a good point that no one ever discusses. Do people really want Joe Six-pack the union pipe-fitter to be the leader of the free world?
I wouldn’t want a Joe Sixpack to be President, no. But I do want someone who knows that Joe Sixpack exists.
Yeah, agreed. I am concerned about having someone for president who thinks that you can easily just “fire” your insurance company and “hire” another one if you are unhappy with your service. Someone who thinks this way is probably not going to make policy decisions that I agree with. And this is only one small example.
I don’t give a shit if the president is someone I feel like I can drink a beer with. But I would like to have a president who is aware that people like me exist in the world and have concerns worthy of being addressed.
People like the “idea” that GWB was someone you could have a beer with. Look what that got us…worst President ever.