CarolHoenig’s whereIstand Blog

I’ve often considered the words of politicians when it comes to understanding poverty to be empty. Michael Powell has written about the dissimilarity between Barack Obama, John McCain and poverty-stricken voters. It does make one wonder just how sincere the candidates can be due to their wealth.

Senator Barack Obama listens to a mother who lost a son in Iraq, and a father who cannot afford health insurance. Then he tightens his tie knot and sets off to elegant fund-raisers.

I suppose those fundraisers are part of the animal known as politics and Obama knew that quite some time ago:

Mr. Obama puts the dissonance into words in his book “The Audacity of Hope” (Crown Publishing, 2006).

 

“I know that as a consequence of my fund-raising I became more like the wealthy donors I met,” he wrote, “in the very particular sense that I spent more and more of my time above the fray, outside the world of immediate hunger, disappointment, fear, irrationality and frequent hardship of the other 99 percent of the population.”

There is some hope that Obama will not forget those like Jeana Brown, who are wallowing in poverty.

She wants to tell Mr. Obama, who is talking about the 30 percent increase in the number of Americans who have filed for bankruptcy, about her trailer.

 

She is 50 and her husband, James, is 48, and they worked and snipped coupons and saved for five years to afford their double-wide trailer. Their credit report had the usual nicks and dents, and so they took a 9.25 percent interest rate on their loan. They relied on their broker’s promise “that if we were good and made our payments, we could refinance at a better rate after a year.”

 

A year later, Ms. Brown walked back in. The broker told her that because their trailer did not have a concrete foundation — which costs thousands more dollars than they had — she and her husband could not refinance.

 

A job disappeared and they faced foreclosure. The couple doubled up on interest payments, from $670 to $1,378 per month. They cut off Internet and cable service and held three yard sales — everything must go!

 

They saved their home.

 

Now her husband drives a truck six weeks at a stretch and she works two jobs. Ms. Brown’s chest heaves, her voice a quivering reed.

 

“I tell you, I’m not sure how we keep doing this,” she says.

 

Obama shakes his head. The gymnasium had gone silent.

 

“Look,” he says, “Jeana is an example of America. Someone who is working hard, who saved, doing all the right things and then gets put into a financial bind primarily because people took advantage of her situation.”

Will the forthcoming election help Jeana’s situation? That is what she is hoping, telling Obama that she contributed her hard-earned $5 toward his campaign. She believes he will help. Meanwhile, Obama has to do what is necessary to help the Jeana Browns of the United States.

Seven hours later, Mr. Obama sits in a leather-lined black S.U.V., riding the “Brother Can You Spare $28,500” finance circuit that has become a fixture of his campaign in recent weeks.

 

His evening begins at The Rocks, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV’s chateau away from chateau, this one all but ensconced in Rock Creek Park in Washington.

 

The car turns up a curling driveway. There are oak and chestnut trees and a wayward doe, and then a three-story Southern-plantation-style manor, with towering columns and 17 windows across and a slate roof, looms into view. It is a useful reminder that before Gates and Bloomberg, Buffett and Geffen, there was old man John D. Rockefeller, who bequeathed to his descendants a truly astonishing mother lode of money.

Most of us have been called to compromise for a favorable outcome, which is what the candidates must do. Sometimes, though, it causes major discomfort.

The Obama fund-raiser rules are akin to a nonpetting zoo: Reporters may stare but no touching or talking is allowed, including to the candidate. Fortunately, Mr. Obama provided a social X-ray of this circuit in his book, and he did not neglect to scan himself.

 

“As a rule, they are smart, interesting people, knowledgeable about public policy, liberal in their politics,” he writes of these crowds. But “they found it hard to imagine there might be a social ill that could not be cured by a high SAT score.”

 

The danger, he adds, is that such nights leave candidates at a remove from their days, not least Ms. Brown and her trailer.

 

“The problems of ordinary people, the Rust Belt town or the dwindling heartland, become a distant echo,” he writes, “abstractions to be managed rather than battles to be fought.”

This is why it is necessary to keep shouting, to demand change; otherwise, we become invisible.