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Go Home Here We Go: Mitt's Middle-Class Upbringing

THE STUMP APRIL 19, 2012

Here We Go: Mitt's Middle-Class Upbringing

BY ALEC MACGILLIS

What's the best way to run for president as a private equity titan and son of a CEO in a time of rising worry about economic inequality, against an opponent who likes to note that he "wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth"? Well, you could accept your lucky lot in life and do everything possible in your proposals to offer opportunity to the less well-off. Or you could start revising your own biography. From today's Washington Post:

Romney is sensitive to perceptions that he grew up wealthy, so Obama’s “silver spoon” remark could strike a nerve. On the campaign trail, the former Massachusetts governor sometimes talks about his father, George, growing up poor and driving across the American West looking for work. When Mitt was born, the family was middle class, moving from Detroit to the tony suburb of Bloomfield Hills only after Mitt was a teenager, when his father took over American Motors. Although Mitt’s parents helped fund his college and graduate education, and helped him and his wife, Anne (sic), buy their first home, he did not inherit his parents’ wealth; he amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune on his own, working at Bain Capital.

Um, not exactly. Actually, this is off on just about every count, according to Michael Kranish and Scott Helman's Real Romney, the definitive biography of the candidate. The family was hardly "middle class" at the time of Mitt's birth -- shortly after he was born, his father George became an executive with the Nash-Kelvinator Corporation, which later merged with Hudson Motor Car Company to become American Motors Corporation, where Romney was soon named executive vice president. He became CEO of AMC in 1954 -- when Mitt was 6 or 7. Likewise, the Romneys moved from their (very big) Detroit home to Bloomfield Hills, "a domain of sprawling homes, emerald lawns, and elite private schools," when he was six or seven,  not "after Mitt was a teenager." And this account also understates the support Mitt received as a young man. George Romney not only "helped fund his college education," he provided his son an allowance when he was at Stanford, though he considered cutting it back after he found out that Mitt was secretly taking flights back to Michigan to visit his sweetheart Ann. After the couple married, Mitt's parents bought them a car as a wedding gift. When they moved from Utah to Boston for Mitt to commence law and business school at Harvard, Mitt's parents helped them buy a house in Belmont, a "leafy Boston suburb" -- not a shabby start for a 24-year-old graduate student. Here's how Ann Romney recently cast the couple's situation in those starting-out years: "We had no income except the stock we were chipping away at. We were living on the edge, not entertaining.” Ah yes, the common twenty-something plight of chipping stock.

Romney's hardly the first candidate to try to talk down his roots. And yes, his outsized wealth is the direct result of his own hard work at Bain Capital. But it requires willful blindness to ignore the advantages that carried him through his first decades in life. And it's the job of the rest of us to hold him to the basic facts of his biography, even as he now tries his best to blur them.

follow me on Twitter @AlecMacGillis

 

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23 comments

I can understand some dissembling with politicians, but Mitt has just one bald faced lie after another, he has no core besides ambition to be President. For the first time in my adult life I find not a single redeeming quality in the nominee for Republicans. McCain was a war hero, GWB was a schmuck but I believe a well meaning one, Dole was also a decent man; I could go on. There is nothing I find redeemable about Romney. Even the faith he donates to (and as a high ranking member enjoys considerable privileges) is misogynistic, racist, and exploitative.

- blackton

April 19, 2012 at 11:47am

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Unable to entertain! dear god, the deprivation! [faints]

- subterran

April 19, 2012 at 12:29pm

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Aww...to be middle class! I never knew the bar for middle class had been set so high before. I guess my working 30hrs/week, taking a full course-load, eating cereal and ramen noodles, renting a house with 4 other people and taking out student loans and loosing 30lbs my first year of college makes for awkward conversation when compared to the suffering Mittens had to put up with during his hard-scrabble times at Stanford. Apparently my middle class parents must have misplace the keys to the new car and note-free home they bought for me and my young blushing bride when I moved to the leafy apartment block in the tony enclave of Alexandria, VA during my pursuit of a masters degree. Oh wait, and they forgot to float me a "loan" to pay for it too. Maybe the Romneys do see themselves as "middling" class since they had to scrape by on the meager earnings their stocks threw their way.

- singlspeed

April 19, 2012 at 12:31pm

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If I had more time between now and the election and was a little handier with technology, I would do a Tumblr comparing quotes from Ann Romney to quotes from Trudy Campbell from Mad Men. That would be fun.

- wildboy

April 19, 2012 at 12:33pm

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Singlespeed, how did you manage to lose 30 pounds as a college freshman? For most people, it's the other way around.

- wildboy

April 19, 2012 at 12:34pm

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Conservatives are so good at re-writing history that they now must believe it's the only way for conservatives to win elections. Second generation wealth is best known for squandering the wealth, but Romney defied that convention and went on to tremendous personal success both in school and in business, for which he should be proud and for which the rest of us should admire (I do) and point to as the model for today's second generation wealth. Today's Republican elite has become so accustomed to selling a lie that they cannot recognize when the truth is better than the lie.

- rayward

April 19, 2012 at 1:17pm

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He said some nasty stuff about Obama today too, accusing Obama of looking for "scapegoats;" I was angry. I really do not like this guy at all.

- Sophia

April 19, 2012 at 1:22pm

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Even with the job at Bain Capital he had to be talked into it by his father. It's not like he had this great idea, then interviewed with Bain Capital to be allowed to implement it. But hey, this is wrong-way Romney we're talking about, the ex-pro-women's rights anti-abortionist anti-Universal Health-Care once-moderate but no more, well maybe, let me just shake this Etch-a-Sketch and see what will get me elected. Mis-characterizing his childhood, his education, his marriage, his allowance, his 5 houses, his multiple cars -- shoot, that's just par for the course. But yes, you'd think his approval rating would reflect all this, eventually.

- AllanL5

April 19, 2012 at 1:26pm

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I'd be proud of Romney's hard work and success, if he wasn't using that as a pedestal to enrich himself and his backers and impoverish the needy. As it is, he's falling into that common Republican distortion -- if you're so smart, why ain't you rich, like I am.

- AllanL5

April 19, 2012 at 1:29pm

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"And yes, his outsized wealth is the direct result of his own hard work at Bain Capital." This is a strange way to talk about what he did at Bain. It somehow makes him sound comparable to the person who creates a company out of an idea, and grows it to success, or who sleeps in the kitchen of a cafe in leased space, cooking, cleaning and doing the books him or herself, on the way to a successful 5 star restaurant or national chain. Romney used other peoples money - to which he had access in no small part BECAUSE of his pedigree (who you were mattered one hell of a lot when it came time to get into Stanford and Harvard in the early 60s) - in order to buy, sell, and often dismember companies, all the while making sure that he and his compadres siphoned off outsized piles of cash, headless of their effect on other peoples' lives and jobs. Lots of people work hard. Most do so for hire to others, in exchange for a reasonable living. A few do so to actually create something out nothing but ideas and hard work. Some do so as a necessary part of plunder and pillage. Romney is far closer to the latter, than either of the former. He's not a hard working entrepreneur, he's a rapacious capitalist, pure and simple.

- IowaBeauty

April 19, 2012 at 1:44pm

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what does "chipping away at stock" mean exactly? Is that like buying and selling on etrade as your day job? I actually have no idea what that comment means. Does it mean they were methodically selling stocks to generate income?

- rusty

April 19, 2012 at 1:52pm

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Yes, "chipping away at stock" means Romney's father gave them some stock, and they sold little pieces of it steadily to finance their lifestyle. But no parties, oh no, they were living lean in those days. Probably only had the one Cadillac.

- AllanL5

April 19, 2012 at 2:15pm

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Yes, and an allowance sufficient to allow one to fly to see one's sweetheart - at a time when flights were much more expensive than they are now - is nothing to sneeze at.

- floydsm8

April 19, 2012 at 2:19pm

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Allan, damn right. An elevator for his cars at one of his homes? That is just freaking obscene. I never understood the appeal of buying huge houses and heating rooms you never go into, and the idea of having a slew of homes is piggish, unless they are a bunch of rentals which Romney ain't doing. When the earth eventually takes its revenge out on the human race I hope the survivors of the human race take it out on the pigs who brought us to that state. Oh wait, the warmest winter in record, warmest decade in record...it is all caused by sun spots...I forgot.

- blackton

April 19, 2012 at 2:22pm

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Wilboy, you ask how I lost 30 instead of gaining the Freshman 20? That was a direct result of working part-time to pay my bills, doing 15 credit hours in engineering and barely having enough money to eat after paying rent, bills and other such stuff. My parents were shocked and decided to help me out by buying me groceries a couple times a month just so I would eat. It's amazing how much you can burn off being stressed out, flat broke and living off of coffee and ramen! Wait...I just had a novel business idea that could make me millions! I better call Bain Capital and see if they're interested in this amazing "investment" opportunity.

- singlspeed

April 19, 2012 at 3:11pm

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... FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt. SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky! THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife. FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah. FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you. ALL: They won't!

- GeoffG

April 19, 2012 at 3:52pm

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". . . and pay mill owner for permission to come to work" Geoff, I think you may have accidentally stumbled upon the economic vision for America that's behind a lot of the conservative GOP rhetoric these days . . .

- ironyroad

April 19, 2012 at 4:05pm

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I would not mind how financially fortunate Mitt Romney was if he seemed concerned with those less fortunate ("i don't care about the poor") but he doesn't. Does anyone want to hear me talk about how I think Romney wants to lower tax rates and repeal the estate tax just to benefit himself?

- Nusholtz

April 19, 2012 at 5:09pm

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OK that about paying the mill owner? Not funny! I know of businesses which charge the workers to work; specifically, strip joints, but what the hey. Work is work and charging people to work isn't right, tips or no tips! Restaurant servers get tips and they are supposed to get paid too so? One wonders what else is out there in the way of paying off the boss so one can experience The Dignity Of Work.

- Sophia

April 19, 2012 at 6:50pm

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A comment (written by a very immature 68 year old man) intended for mature audiences, & a variation on the theme of “Romney is trying too hard.” When I was younger and still sexually active with my wife, I (like most men) suffered from occasional “performance problems.” In those pre-Viagra days, I turned to Masters and Johnson's sex therapy books. The main point they made was that a man cannot will an erection; trying too hard is the very guarantee of failure. In all honesty, I hope the Romneys' love life is more successful and more rewarding than his political efforts so far. On the other hand, I would hate to see problems in the latter area spread to the former arena.

- skahn

April 19, 2012 at 8:32pm

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Nush, keep up the good work on reminding everyone about the Romneys' personal windfall, should the "death tax" be repealed. I hope one of these days Chait or one of the writers at TNR picks it up and starts giving it some air time ... from there, it will only be a matter of time before some enterprising Super PAC puts it into an ad two weeks before the election: "Did you know that Mitt Romney wants to pass laws that will make his sons richer by $84 million dollars?" should sound great in an ad!!

- NR409654

April 19, 2012 at 10:26pm

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thumbs up geoff...anything that can be explained by Monty Python only adds to the absurd comic aspect of.

- singlspeed

April 20, 2012 at 10:18am

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MacGillis: "you could accept your lucky lot in life and do everything possible in your proposals to offer opportunity to the less well-off." It worked for FDR. It worked for the Kennedys. But it doesn't work for Romney, because he doesn't really have proposals to offer opportunity for the less well-off. That's why he's trying to revise his bio to make it look like he's "just like us." But since that simply isn't true, that approach doesn't work very well either.

- dsimon

April 20, 2012 at 1:26pm

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