Out of touch

Atrios and Susie both highlighted this Philadelphia Daily News item over the weekend.

Ronnie Polaneczky reports that Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., sometimes has trouble making ends meet. In his book, "It Takes a Family," Santorum writes that he gets financial help from his retired parents:

They're by no means wealthy — they're two retired VA [Veterans Administration] employees — but they'll send a check every now and then. They realize things are a little tighter for us.

As Polaneczky notes, Santorum makes $162,000 a year. That puts his family in the top 5 percent of all American households in terms of income. So, you know, boo hoo.

Santorum's lament recalls this earlier story about another Pennsylvania Republican. As homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge was making $175,700 a year. He resigned from that post, he said, because he couldn't manage to put two kids through college on such a paltry salary:

Ridge, 58, has explained to colleagues that he needs to earn money to comfortably put his two children, Tommy Jr. and Lesley, through college, officials said. Both are now teenagers. Ridge earns $175,700 a year as a Cabinet secretary.

I have no problem with senators or cabinet secretaries earning this kind of money. These jobs carry enormous responsibilities. It also makes sense that public servants be paid well enough that capable people are willing to leave the private sector to accept such jobs, and so that financial hardship does not become a temptation to corruption.

But it is a problem — a very large problem — when public servants earning such substantial sums forget that this vast income makes them exceptional.

Rick Santorum is supposed to represent the people of Pennsylvania, where the median household income is about $44,000 a year. If Santorum were a good man, or a wise man, or a minimally self-aware man, he would recognize the vast difference between his own financial security and that of the majority of families in the state he represents.* Yet he seems not to realize this. He seems to want our sympathy, while offering nothing in the way of empathy.

Santorum is, as the saying goes, out of touch. Way out of touch. This out-of-touchness is not a function of his having a top-tier income. Many public servants far wealthier than Rick Santorum have managed to avoid losing touch. The man he replaced in the Senate, Harris Wofford, was very wealthy, but never operated under the illusion that most people shared his good fortune.

This phrase — out of touch, losing touch — bears closer inspection. Out of touch with what? With reality. Or, at least, with reality for most people. Reality for the other 95 percent of Americans, those people who somehow manage to get by on less than $162,000.

I've filed this post under "class warfare" — a joking reference to a favorite phrase of the defenders of privilege. But this isn't about class warfare. That's something Republicans failed to understand in their disingenuous populist attacks against George Soros and Teresa Heinz Kerry. The problem is not wealthy people in public service. The problem is wealthy people who don't understand that they are wealthy, or that everyone else isn't.

Santorum suffers from a dangerous combination of selfishness and a lack of imagination. Someone that out of touch is not fit to represent the people of Pennsylvania.

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* Sen. Santorum has an exceptionally large family. But so what? His six kids make his household twice the median size, but their income is still far greater than twice that median. The Pa. median income for a family of four is about $44,000, or $11,000 per member of the household. Santorum's family makes about $20,250 per member of the household. So, again, boo hoo. Bobby Kennedy had nine kids, but he never forgot that his family was financially blessed. And he never lost touch with the reality facing the vast majority of American families who didn't have the financial resources his family enjoyed.