(ThyBlackMan.com) Last Week President Obama and Mitt Romney delivered dueling speeches from New Hampshire. Each man took shots at the other. The theme from both being the other is “out of touch.” This week they are prepared to do it again. GOP Mitt Romney continues his “Every Town Counts” tour with an appearance in Wisconsin today. President Barack Obama will also hit the campaign trail. As both stump to steal independent votes away from the other I can’t help but wonder if either man as of lately has been in touch enough with the electorate to know that whatever they have in store will never be enough.
The Great Recession forever changed the United States and this world. Where the Great Depression ended and gave way to times of strict regulation, high taxes, middle class prosperity, rapid job creation, and a baby boom because people could afford to have almost as many kids as they wanted, the Great 
Recession is leading the country into the opposite direction. While we no longer hang on the precipice of economic disaster and financial ruin we do remain in a heavily wooded forest of unrest and uncertainty. Prosperity cannot exist without balance and as weekly report after weekly report signifies we are completely unbalanced.
So what do a billionaire and the leader of the free world have in common with me or anyone who is not them or at their level?
Anything.
Anyone.
Nothing.
Crickets
While the argument can be made President Barack Obama is more in touch than Mitt Romney just on the basis of background alone, the President has come a long way from the streets of Honolulu and Indonesia; living from culture to culture searching for answers to racial questions that eluded him and a father whose mystique both excited and confused a child, turned teen, turned adult. Mitt Romney may be the all American guy with a beautiful wife and large family but his level of success (which no one begrudges him, let’s just be clear) many will not ever see in this lifetime let alone if they had the chance to live life two or three times over.
The men and women who aspire and succeed in running our economy and country may not all begin with wealth or pedigreed family names but by the time they’re in the job of their choosing, making, or nepotism gaining, they have amassed an arsenal of money as well as friends in high places that separates them from many in the electorate who work to live, and live to work.
What often times connects a President to the people is the ability to empathize even if complete understanding is lost. The ability to connect on some level of struggle even if your struggles are not the same as the struggles of the people you hope to govern. This ability was an asset to the President in 2008 because he could tell his story of boyhood to Harvard for the first time and impress people by the magnitude of his own American dream. Now he struggles to make that same mark because by now we’ve “Heard It All Before” and are wondering “What Have You Done For Me Lately?”
As for GOP Mitt Romney his life in the private sector making goo gobs of money on top of goo gobs of money places him in a rare class of Americans who have the luxury of not having to know, worry or care about the cost of a gallon of milk, a gallon of gas or even the occasional splurge on a half gallon of Breyer’s Vanilla Bean ice cream. His brief stint serving the public and the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts show he has a desire to govern. The question is whether or not this desire is because governing is what he thinks he ought to do or is it something he simply wants to do because that’s the natural progression from CEO to Governor to President.
Both men no matter their leadership capabilities or lack there of struggle to connect. The President is professorial, aloof, cold, distant, calculating and meticulous. GOP Mitt Romney is a businessman, cold, calculating, awkward, rich, and white. While race has no bearing on who is the most or least out of touch it does matter considering the considerable browning of America.
As the years move forward the issues of the other will overtake the issues of the hegemony and what will be left is a power struggle worst than any epic battle of families you can name; Capulet and Montague, Lancaster and York, Hatfield and McCoy, Stark, Baratheon, Lannister and Targaryan. This is not to say President Barack Obama is more in touch because of his color. Just look at Herman Cain to disprove that theory. But eventually the resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will have to look more like who he governs than the people in the powdered wig pictures hung on the walls illustrating history.
The whole point of being in touch is not just to win votes in a beguiling act that disappears on inauguration day. The point of being in touch is not just to empathize. It is not even to simply understand. What a President comprehends and what a President does to evoke change are two entirely different things. The point of being in touch is to take that in touchness and use it to create policy fair to all but helpful to the most in need. This is not government getting bigger and promoting welfare and apathy. This is government taking responsibility for those stuck in between who are neither offered a hand out or a fair merit based step up.
On that point GOP Mitt Romney fails and President Obama is lacking (whether that lack is severe or not can be debated.)
As these men battle back and forth in swing state after swing state vying for votes which may never be theirs I’d appreciate it if they didn’t mock the people they presume to know by claiming how in touch they are. Sell me what you’re trying to sell me and let me make an informed decision of whether or not I want to buy. We all know at the end of the day the President and GOP Mitt Romney will do whatever is necessary to be elected and from there promote policies as they see fit. If they end up helping someone along the way then great.
Being President is as much about being in touch and governing for the people as it is about playing the game to win. People don’t win. Profitable messages do. Politics is advertising on a much grander, life altering scale.
What is “in touch” and who can claim it?
Staff Writer; Nikesha Leeper
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