Job creator or super-villain? You decide.

I don’t actually think Bain Capital is evil, I just like the play on words. And there is a certain poetic justice in the name – if I saw a movie where the heartless, predatory corporation was named “Bain” I would think it was a little too on the nose.

But I don’t think Bain Capital is especially good either, even in a basic utilitarian sense. Bain basically reflects the way smart, well-financed people can exploit loopholes in the tax and bankruptcy laws to make large amounts of money. On the scale of business morality, it falls somewhere between Wal-Mart and Lex Luthor. It’s completely possible to believe strongly in free enterprise and still think Bain was not particularly productive or worthwhile for society as a whole, just as it was possible to believe in America and still think George W. Bush was an arrogant moron.

Thinking about Mitt Romney’s defense of Bain and President Obama’s attacks on it got me to thinking about Aristotle’s three pillars of rhetoric: logos, pathos and ethos. Aristotle was wrong about almost everything, but I think he had a good framework here: logos is the argument from logic and reason; pathos is the appeal to emotion (which is not necessarily less legitimate than logic; most of our moral decisions require emotional intelligence, which is why it’s better not to elect sociopaths to positions of responsibility) and ethos is the argument based on the character and credibility (or lack thereof) of the person arguing. President Obama’s attacks on Bain certainly include elements of logos (Bain reflects a disastrous approach to economic policy) and pathos (workers whose lives were ruined by Bain’s machinations), but I think the main argument here is one of ethos.

I generally discount claims that a candidate’s background gives them some special qualification for public office. Typically these claims follow the formula “As a former (insert biographical detail here) I know that we need to (implement whichever policy I or my party or my donors prefer).” So you get things like “As a veteran, I know that we need to (ramp up/scale back) our military presence in Iraq” or “As a mom, I know that we need to (cut taxes/increase family leave).” In Mitt Romney’s case, we find that his lengthy experience in private equity and venture capital has coincidentally led him to adopt the exact economic policy currently embraced by the most conservative elements of his party.

The reason I think President Obama has chosen to hit this so hard is that this sort of argument from ethos can be very effective in American politics. Even sophisticated participants tend to assume that wealthy, successful people know much more about macroeconomic policy than they actually do. Most rich people know a lot about their field but may know next to nothing about broader fiscal and monetary policy. They know they don’t want to pay higher taxes, so they are extremely susceptible to arguments for cutting taxes on high incomes, however dubious those arguments may be from an orthodox economic perspective. Beyond that, there is no reason to think that your average CEO or venture capitalist would be especially good at setting economic policy. (Ironically enough, Mitt Romney probably does have a pretty good grasp of macroeconomic theory but essentially lobotomized himself to secure the Republican nomination).

What the Obama campaign has to neutralize is the idea that Romney’s business background equips him to fix the economy. And the nature of Romney’s business gives him the opening to do that. If people come to think of Romney’s background as one of predatory, opportunistic wheeling and dealing (which is an accurate if not a charitable characterization) , then it becomes much harder for Romney to use the aura of business success as mood music for his campaign. And stripped of the rich-guy credibility, Romney’s argument amounts to “Let’s re-adopt George Bush’s policies but not be so gosh-darned tough on the wealthy.” That’s a tougher argument to make.

This is somewhat related to my earlier thoughts on the outrage treadmill (check it out – a self-referencing link. A milestone for my blog!). It occurred to me while scrolling Facebook for the joys and outrages of the day. Think Progress, which I usually find a pretty reasonable source, had a breathless headline about a woman being kicked off an airplane for “wearing a pro-choice T-shirt.” As it turns out, the T-shirt displayed the slogan “If I wanted the government in my womb, I’d f**k a senator” (without the asterisks.)

So I guess it’s possible that American Airlines – a company with a pretty progressive record on gay rights and other issues – harbors some deep animosity against the pro-choice cause and has a policy of harassing pro-choice passengers. That would be insane behavior on the part of a troubled airline that has no reason to offend or annoy at least half of its passengers, but I will concede that it’s possible. Or it’s possible that the airline was enforcing its stated dress code that prohibits clothing with offensive language. I think the latter explanation is more than 99 percent likely to be true, while the former explanation is less than 1 percent likely, yet the headline chose to present the drastically less likely version as if it were the only possible motivation for the airline’s action.

It’s perfectly possible to think that American Airlines overreacted or that the policy is overly restrictive or prone to abuse or what have you. Among my Facebook friends I’ve noticed a pretty stark divide between those with young children and those without on the question of whether it’s OK to wear that sort of shirt on a plane with families heading off to Disneyland. As a personal matter I would say that when you’re going to be sealed in a metal box with people of all ages and beliefs, a certain amount of discretion is appropriate.

But leave that question aside for a moment. The more telling thing here is that Think Progress didn’t put this up with the headline “Squares at American Airlines kick woman kicked off flight for having f**k on her T-shirt,” which was (1) at least as true as the other headline and (2) a much more plausible account of the motivations behind the incident. The reason, I suspect, is that nobody would have cared about that headline. Some people are uptight about language, especially around children. No one’s going to get their pitchforks out for that. But “Woman kicked off for pro-choice T-shirt” is a much better draw. Now we have a modern-day Susan B. Anthony being oppressed by the jack-booted misogynists at American Airlines. That will be worth a few clicks.

And that’s the part that bothers me. C.S. Lewis wrote a great passage once about the dangerous pleasures of hatred:

“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black.”

Human beings are prone to believe the worst about their enemies, even when it’s unlikely, for the same reason that human beings will eat an entire tub of ice cream rather than stopping at one serving. Righteous indignation is pleasurable. But it really can make us devils (or whatever the secular humanist equivalent is) if it’s not tempered by compassion, empathy and a genuine desire to be accurate about other people’s motives and intentions.

This metaphor is brilliant, and it helped me with something I have been trying to articulate during previous discussions of Mitt Romney’s privileged background. The basic idea is that, if everyday life in the Western world were a role-playing game, “‘Straight White Male’ is the lowest difficulty setting there is.” It’s not that I resent or dislike straight white males (being two-third of one myself), or that I think they need to apologize for their advantages, or feel liberal white guilt, or whatever phrase the selfishness lobby is peddling these days. All I want is (1) some acknowledgment that your life as a straight white male (particularly one born into an affluent and well-connected family) is in many non-trivial ways easier than the life of others and (2) some openness to the idea that mitigating some of the effect of blind luck isn’t some immoral campaign to punish you for your well-earned success.

A few years back some conservative douchebag set out to rebut Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed, about the working poor. The plan was to spend a year working low-wage jobs “without using his college education,” and by the end of the year he would have a home, a car, and money in his savings account. I confess I did not read the book because I feared the aura of self-satisfaction would cause me physical harm. But what struck me immediately was how oblivious the whole premise was. Even if he ended his year of slumming with a bank account full of cash, it would say nothing about Ehrenreich’s argument. First, he thought that if he didn’t list his college degree on his job application, he somehow wasn’t using his college education to advance his employment goals. But even the most lax college education probably gives its recipients some edge in verbal and math skills. Moreover, he would not even acknowledge at the outset that a good-looking, educated white man with no dependents might have a harder time than a middle-aged Hispanic women with two kids trying to make ends meet. It’s not the privilege that maddens me, it’s the obtuseness. No one is saying that you have to give back your land, but a modicum of humility and empathy for those who have not had your advantages is just common decency.

Which brings me back to Mitt Romney. It’s not that I begrudge the man his money, God knows it seems to be very important to him. Everyone needs a hobby. But I have never seen him do or say anything to suggest that he might not have made all that money if he had not been born as the favored son of an affluent white family. He might also reflect on the fact that his son Tagg would not be raking in so much money in private equity if his ridiculous first name were followed by “Rodriguez” rather than “Romney.” No one’s asking him to apologize for his wealth, just to spare some thought for those who did not play the game on the easiest setting.