A word cloud of one of Mitt Romney's speeches
There's something about political office—running for it and occupying it—that forces you to continuously wrap yourself tightly in the hideous snuggie that is a politician's lexicon and to grin like a fool while doing it.
The phenomenon goes beyond the mere use of expected platitudes like "we can do better," "let's get this country working again!" or the obligatory three-part-zombie-mantra of "jobs, jobs, jobs."
The most bizarre and often hilarious part of a politician's public marketing is self-marketing.
I suspect there's a ritual that takes place relatively early on in the candidate recruitment process where candidates are taken into a consultant-filled conference room, stripped out of their $2,000 suits, forced to watch reruns of Home Improvement and encouraged to read Reader's Digest while valets swap out the Benz for a used Ford Focus in the parking lot.
Looking (and driving) the middle class part is only half the battle. The trick is making the non-middle class candidates sound like they've frequented IHOP for more than just a campaign stop.
That's a mission impossible that would make Ethan Hunt proud. But it doesn't stop candidates from awkwardly and persistently engaging in the task.
Take Newt Gingrich. He played "poor Newt" last week, claiming he was "a middle class person" ... by comparing himself to Michael Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney (who's been in politics one out of every five years of his adult life) insisted last week that "I don't have a political career." Contain your laughter, please.
The list goes on and on from candidates in big and small races and from both sides of the aisle, as if claiming you're "normal" and "average" enough times will wish it to be true (at least in the minds of voters).
The fact remains that no matter how many times a candidate professes to be a distant, slightly better coiffed cousin of Mike Rowe, no matter how many times they get photographed in their jeans and plaid "work shirt" with rolled up sleeves (yes, someone checked the tags were off before the photo shoot), and no matter how many times they throw in a "folks" or "y'all" or strained Simpsons reference into their speech, it is and always will be an act—and most voters know it as such.
This is the grand charade of our federal political system. It is a vast, multibillion dollar expanse of power with a single entry point: money. If you have it, you can run and even get elected. If you don't, you can't and won't. Generally, only the wealthy can afford to run for office, which is why the make up of Congress looks like this.
And so every campaign season, the parade of abnormal Americans come calling for votes with their best impression of us normal folks. They eat corn dogs at festivals they've never heard of, tour factories they'd never work in, shake hands with folks they wouldn't ever hire, wear clothes from stores they've never shopped at, and speak in a way that sounds more like an Arthur Miller script than a sincere attempt to disclose any authentic governing philosophy.
Our role as voters is to participate in a spectacular suspension of disbelief. We pretend, if only for the duration of the campaign, that this man or woman that sounds like us can perhaps speak for us in Washington.
Do we actually believe it? Rarely. Because no matter how good a speechwriter you hire, no matter how great a media consultant may be, and no matter how many weeks of training a candidate may have as they go through their "middle class crash course" to learn how the other 99% lives, no matter how well they memorize the price of gas and the cost of a gallon of milk, true authenticity in speech and action is priceless. It's one thing even the richest of candidates (hey Mitt!) can't buy.