Oh, remember the days when poverty was cute? You ate Ramen noodles and shared a pizza with a dozen friends because collectively you could only afford to buy the one pie.
Oh, those were the days.
At least those are the days politicians have been recounting during this presidential election year to try to appear to be just like real people, Americans who are struggling paycheck to paycheck.
Ann Romney, Vice President Biden, New Jersey’s Gov. Chris Christie and Michelle Obama “all either disinterred impoverished ancestors or harked back to their own days of voluntary poverty,” Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote this week.
In her Republican National Convention speech, Romney said she and GOP presidential candidate Mitt “ate a lot of pasta and tuna fish. Our desk was a door propped up on sawhorses. Our dining room table was a fold-down ironing board in the kitchen. Those were very special days.”
“Of course, Mitt was the son of an auto company CEO who became governor of Michigan, and Ann had gone to the tony Kingswood School (since merged with Cranbrook) where the present-day tuition is $28,300 for day students and $38,900 for boarders. They were both rich — if not in great wealth, then in promise,” Cohen wrote.
As Cohen pointed out, Michelle Obama recalled that the president used to pick her up “in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going by in a hole in the passenger-side door.”
“Of course, the couple in that car had both graduated from Harvard Law,” he added.
There is a great difference between voluntary poverty and crushing poverty, Cohen noted. “Poverty, after all, is not about bookcases made of planks and bricks but about utter hopelessness. The poor do not have affluent parents. The poor do not have college degrees. The poor often do not even have high school degrees. What is it like to be 50 and suddenly out of work? What is it like to send out your 100th or 500th résumé? What is it like to spend your savings on long-term medical care so that you get reduced to poverty?”
Cohen makes the case that stories from candidates about their financially leaner days might not be so endearing to the shrinking middle class.
On Wednesday, two days after that column, a new report from the Census Bureau found that the middle class lost ground again last year, falling to an all-time low in their share of how much income they take in, reported The Post’s Carol Morello.
People with annual incomes between $20,263 and $62,434 collectively earned less than 24 percent of all income in 2011, even though they made up 40 percent of the population, Morello reported. The top fifth increased its share to half of all income. The top 5 percent gained the most income, rising almost 5 percent in a single year.
So here’s the Color of Money Question of the Week:
What do you think of politicians using, as Cohen said, stories about their impoverished ancestors or their own days of voluntary poverty to connect to voters? Send your responses to colorofmoney@washpost.com. Be sure to include your full name, city and state and put “Poor Little Rich Me” in the subject line.
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