Romney Fails The Empathy Test

washingtonpost.com — In Mitt Romney’s worldview, there is no need to be “concerned” about poverty as long as people are not starving. What our society ought to be concerned about is making sure that poor people have the tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty. Liberals and conservatives might disagree on how best to accomplish this goal. What we cannot do is simply write off up to one-fifth of the nation’s human potential, as if it were a footnote in a corporation’s annual report. I’m not blaming Romney for our decades-long failure to address structural poverty. The fact is that our system tends to award benefits to those who wield political and economic power. But there was something disturbing about the icy way in which Romney, even when trying to clarify his initial remark, continued to insist that the poor receive government help and therefore need not be a focus of his policies.

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