It's About People- President Obama's Compassion Versus Governor Romney's Disdain

Mud slinging is routine in politics but this year's presidential candidates are catching ordinary people in the "no man's land" middle of their verbal volleying.

Republican Romney was caught exposing how businesses makes money by describing how he likes being able to fire people who provide services to him.  It's that "People" thing...they're the problem. Too many people on the payroll erodes profits.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/post/romney-sees-need-to-be-able-to-fire-service-providers/2012/01/09/gIQAF18alP_blog.html

Yesterday, at White House news conference on the economy, President Obama made a comparison response to a reporter's question when he happened to say the private sector economy is doing okay - compared to the public sector. Of course, Republicans cut off the second half of the message to create their own sound bite.

From the Blog Newser: Read Less Know More - "But don't be surprised if another line generates the most chatter, one in which he declared the "private sector is doing fine" in the US. BuzzFeed, calls it a 'gift to Republicans,' and indeed the National Review Online quickly tweeted a video of the comment." http://www.newser.com/story/147725/obama-private-sector-is-doing-fine.html

At least President Obama's private sector response reflected compassion for the working middle class, while Governor Romney's comment about firing people exposed his disdain about the cost of employees.

Moreover, disdain continued in Mr. Romney's knee jerk response to President Obama's sound bite remark, by acknowledging how Republicans want to cut jobs for police, firefighters and teachers.

Mr. Romney made comments on Friday afternoon in Iowa that suggested the country doesn’t need more firefighters, police or teachers.  Yet, many news reports omit  where Mr. Romney says Americans don't want to hire more police, firefighters or teachers.  


Dear Mr. Romney, police, firefighters and teachers are Americans!  Your clearly elitist response obviously demonstrates, again, disdain for ordinary people who happen to consume money on payrolls. 


Romney obviously never asked the US citizens who carry the honor of being police, firefighters and teachers if they consider their jobs to be a value to their fellow Americans.


Mr. Romney and his overaggressive advisors didn't prepare a sharpened response to the President's private sector comment.  Rather, Romney immediately made a disdainful remark about America's middle class in his zealous response.

While middle class Americans are forced to pay attention to the Presidential 2012 mud slinging, because, after all, we're already deluged with untethered and expensive political ads, these verbal assaults by candidates are reflective of how each feels about ordinary people.  

Mr. Romney's concept of "people" are that they're expensive and dispensable, while Mr. Obama demonstrated compassion for the workers.

While each political campaign desperately searches for that "gotcha" moment, perhaps the real magic bullet is how the candidates perceive the value of people.  Are we number expenses on a businesses bottom line or do we bring value to society?

It's clear to me, Republicans marginalize people in their concept of how to improve our nation's economy.

In contrast, Democrats consider people to be the engine that drives the economy.

President Clinton created this segue quote - "It's about the People, stupid!"

But in the political 'no man's land", both candidates have clearly put people in the middle of their strategy.  I'd like to know how Mr. Romney defines "people" and whether or not he supports their contributions as bringing value to our economy?