Mitt Romney’s bet now is that the economy will be so bad that the American people will forgive him for anything to get a new start

Is Mitt Romney too rich to be elected the president of America? Is his enormous wealth a liability rather than an asset particularly when America is going through hard times? Is his money too in your face to Americans? This is a question worth pondering because if Mitt Romney becomes president he will be the richest man to be elected president of the United States. His wealth is estimated to be around $250 million. According to People magazine though he did not work in the last year he was making $50,000 a day. If you take the wealth of the last eight presidents from Richard Nixon to Barrack Obama and double their wealth then it adds up to something near Mitt Romney’s wealth.

Nelson Rockefeller from the storied Rockefeller family ran for president thrice seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 1960,1964 and 1968. He was the governor of New York between 1959 and 1973. He was selected by Gerald Ford to be his vice-president after he became president on Richard Nixon’s resignation. He never won the Republican nomination and never became the president of the United States .Was his wealth a barrier? Similarly Ross Perot a billionaire ran for presidency as an independent candidate in 1992 and 1996 but did not make much headway. He too failed.

Per se money should not be a problem to get elected. However it is what money seems to do to people and particularly what it seems to have done to Governor Mitt Romney which is the issue here. Mitt Romney seems to lack the common touch .He seems to be insensitive to people and doesn’t seem to understand that may have feelings, too. His comments about Jewish culture being superior recently riled the Palestinians. It is impossible to think of any president including Dubya (George Bush) saying something similar. On Governor Romney’s first trip abroad after he became the Republican candidate for president, Romney’s insensitivity was famously on display in London.

He took pot-shots at the organisers for mis-steps in organising the Olympic Games and bragged about his superior organising abilities when he helped to organise the Winter Olympic Games at Salt Lake City in Utah. David Cameron the British prime minister had to point out that organising Olympics in the middle of nowhere was different from organising the Olympics in one of the busiest cities in the world. The prime minister would have also done well to point out that Summer Olympics are slightly larger with probably twice as many events as the Winter Olympics. There was a famous gaffe of Mitt Romney where he said that if he became president the relations between Great Britain and the United States would improve because they were both Anglo Saxons. This was around about way of pointing out that President Obama was black. This also highlighted Romney’s insensitivity and being out of touch.

Then there is the famous Romney horse in the Olympics which is participating in an event called Dressage which is some sort of “Horse Ballet” but is a sport for the richest of the rich and it draws attention to Mitt Romney’s wealth. There is also the vexed question of the non-release of Mitt Romney’s tax returns beyond the year. His father famously released his tax returns for 12 years when he was running for president. Governor Romney is not releasing his tax returns beyond a year on the ground that the Democrats will distort them. Is is specious at best and is going to hurt Romney sooner or later. He might also be the first presidential candidate who had a Swiss bank account and funds in the Cayman Islands. Ordinary Americans I am quite sure do not understand all this. They probably regard all these things as petty alien.

Butt Mitt Romney was the head of Bain capital, a venture capital company, and venture capitalists by their very nature are betting men and Mitt Romney was obviously a pro. Mitt Romney’s bet now is that the economy will be so bad that the American people will forgive him for anything to get a new start, to get a second chance. For that very reason he discusses only the economy and does not dwell on other issues for too long. Judging by his recent speech on foreign policy he might not be too interested in other issues and his bet is that in the present circumstances neither are the Americans.

Mitt Romney bet big-time at Bain and won big-time but presidency may turn out to be a different cup of tea.

(Harsh Desai has done his BA in Political Science from St Xavier's College & Elphinstone College, Bombay and has done his Master's in Law from Columbia University in the city of New York. He is a practicing advocate at the Bombay High Court.)