Out of Touch
by digby
James Warren on Robert Gibbs’ “relatively modest” salary:
[I]t’s natural to labor hard in government, see what goes on a few blocks away and feel entitled to same. People who came to town to change the world, and fight for the working guy, wind up thinking that a salary that would be a king’s ransom to most of their constituents is chicken feed.
It’s partly because they inevitably contrast themselves not with others in government, or cushier locales in the nonprofit world, but with the mightiest denizens of corporate America.
Should that be the basis of comparison, even stipulating that Gibbs is smarter than many outrageously-compensated corporate executives I have encountered and probably labored twice as hard in an inherently thankless, burnout task in which family life takes a back seat?
I’ve known elected officials, who had significant impact on laws and regulations touching the private sector, who bristled at the sums earned by the CEOs who lobbied them and whose firms they impacted, sometimes helped enormously. One congressional titan even pointed with blatant envy to the seven-figure salaries of network television anchors who cozzied up to him.
In some cases, I could appreciate the reflex. It’s probably more pronounced amid the new private equity fortunes. Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel, for one, made a tidy $16 million in that universe in just one year after leaving the Clinton administration.
So President Obama may have spoken a certain marketplace truth Monday. Unfortunately, it’s a market known to too few Americans during historically tough times when a pink slip, or just the need for a root canal, can bring financial crisis to homes.
I wrote about the spirited defense of the President’s comment by Paul Begala and Mary Matalin the other day, and I don’t mean to beat a dead horse. But the fact is that on so many levels it’s become clear that the elites don’t know or care how they sound to the rest of the country, whether it’s tone deafness about the economy or dismissiveness about violent rhetoric. They are completely out of touch.
Ironically, those leaders who seem to be the most in touch are the everyday, lower level congressional Reps, who do the intimate voter outreach stuff like Giffords was doing on Saturday. And it’s clear that both sides have been influenced by the aggressive rhetoric of the Tea Party. The disconnect can be seen here:
Another Ohio Democrat, Steve Driehaus, clashed repeatedly with Boehner before losing his seat in the midterm elections. After Boehner suggested that by voting for Obamacare, Driehaus “may be a dead man” and “can’t go home to the west side of Cincinnati” because “the Catholics will run him out of town,” Driehaus began receiving death threats, and a right-wing website published directions to his house. Driehaus says he approached Boehner on the floor and confronted him. “I didn’t think it was funny at all,” Driehaus says. “I’ve got three little kids and a wife. I said to him, ‘John, this is bullshit, and way out of bounds. For you to say something like that is wildly irresponsible.'” Driehaus is quick to point out that he doesn’t think Boehner meant to urge anyone to violence. “But it’s not about what he intended — it’s about how the least rational person in my district takes it. We run into some crazy people in this line of work.” Driehaus says Boehner was “taken aback” when confronted on the floor, but never actually said he was sorry: “He said something along the lines of, ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’ But he didn’t apologize.”
Boehner wasn’t calling for anyone to do violence against Driehaus. But violent rhetoric has become so mainstream among Republicans that he just didn’t hear it the way Driehaus heard it. Similarly, this infamous exchange between Chuck Todd and Gabrielle Giffords over the Palin target map shows that he doesn’t understand how a person who is being shouted down at every Townhall meeting by an angry group of super-aggressive, coordinated constituents, who are following detailed instructions, might logically feel intimidated.
Out of touch, in so many ways, many of our elites simply don’t know what’s going on out here.
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