Dear Governor Romney,
Like
you, I have a J.D. from Harvard Law School (HLS '01). Unlike you, I'm
among the 47% of Americans who have paid little or no federal income tax
for a substantial portion of their adult lives. You recently described
this demographic (totaling over 150 million Americans) as "dependent
upon government" -- that is, as comprised of individuals who, or so you
claim, "believe that they are
victims, believe that government has a responsibility to care for them,
believe that they're entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to
you name it." I'm in that group of persons, in other words, who (or so
you say) "won't take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
These comments came as no small surprise to me, Governor, as I had
always thought of myself -- and long believed it implicit in my
biography -- that I am someone who is thoughtful, passionate, ambitious,
and (yes) successful. Perhaps not successful in the only way you seem
to understand America or Americans -- in monetary terms -- but in ways
I'm not at all ashamed to say have made my life worth living, and have
hopefully helped improve, on occasion, the lives of others in my
community. When you measure a life purely in economic terms, Governor,
as seems to be your penchant -- an unprecedented one, I believe, for
someone who would govern a democratic, industrialized nation
-- you only confirm
in my mind, and in the minds of
millions of others, that you do not understand the source of America's
greatness. What makes America great is the courage of its people, and
that courage is exhibited daily in corners of our economy and our
society that clearly remain opaque to your view.
When
you were at
Harvard Law School in the early 1970s, you lived with Ann in a
beautiful home given to you rent-free by your father, Michigan Governor
George Romney. And you paid your daily bills using stock revenue you
inherited from your father. (I'm afraid that when you told a gaggle of
millionaires at your recent $50,000-a-plate fundraiser that you
"inherited nothing," you were not being at all truthful.) When I was at
Harvard Law School in the late 1990s, I lived in a fifty-year-old
dormitory called "the Gropius Complex," and my room was a 10' x 10'
cubbyhole. I lived entirely off public and private loans. I'll be paying
back those loans until I'm in my mid- to late forties, thanks in large
part to your party's morally-bankrupt obstruction of the President's
student-loan reforms.
After
you graduated from HLS in 1975, you took a job at the Boston Consulting
Group, working as a management consultant to some of the nation's
wealthiest businesses and households; your job was to help the
super-rich augment their
wealth to levels previously unimagined in the history of humankind. You
were, I'm sure, handsomely rewarded for that employment, and no doubt
many of your clients were able to purchase their fifth and sixth sports
cars on the strength of your efforts. When I left HLS in 2001, it was
with a student loan burden of more than $125,000; nevertheless, I
decided to do with my law degree
what I had set out to do on the day I applied to law school: I took a
job as a public defender, working on behalf of America's poorest
citizens for a little over $30,000/year. My colleagues at the public
defender's office in New Hampshire, many of whom had come from top law
schools around the nation, never once complained about their wages
because they were, as I was, honored to uphold the U.S. Constitution
every day in court -- and to work on behalf of those fellow citizens
least equipped to advocate on their own behalves. The men and women I
worked with at the New Hampshire Public Defender between 2001 and 2007
are still my heroes; many of them faced financial difficulties I can't
even imagine, as while their student loan debt was commensurate with
mine, they lacked the advantage of the generous loan-forgiveness program
our alma mater has offered for several decades now. Even with that
substantial assistance, I sometimes found it difficult to
make ends meet. It wasn't just because I was earning less than 20% of
the salary my law school classmates were earning: Some unexpected
medical expenses arose; I was helping to support two other individuals I
cared about very much; there were a thousand unforeseeable expenses
that daily ate into my virtually nonexistent checking account. In short,
I always felt -- and always was -- approximately one paycheck from
destitution. I had no savings, no stock, no property, and no equity.
(Nor do I now.) During those early years of public service my
debt-to-income ratio stagnated at more than 4:1 -- so preposterously
unbalanced a figure that my student-loan exit interviewer at HLS laughed
out loud when she first saw it.
I
don't think for a minute, nor would I ever argue, that I ever had it as
bad as many others have and do -- the lives my clients lived were by and large far more financially desperate than my own (and
almost
all of them worked full-time, Governor, sometimes in multiple jobs,
and still couldn't afford de minimis bail money or an attorney for
their own defense) -- but I still remember the day my bank account
finally tapped out in 2005. I remember the day my then-fiancee and I
literally rolled pennies we found in my bargain-basement Civic (not
nickels, mind you) to prepare ourselves for
a trip to the supermarket. I was ashamed of my financial state, then,
as I am now in relating that time in my life. But not for a moment --
not for one second -- did I ever question my decision to enter a life of
public service. Upholding my attorney's oath to protect and defend the
U.S. Constitution against the encroachments of an imperious government,
and to speak passionately and (I hope) eloquently for those without the
resources to do so for themselves, was consistent, in all respects, with
the values my schoolteacher mother and businessman father had instilled
in me growing up in Massachusetts. Governor, entering a life of public
service is almost never a financially wise decision, especially not for
an attorney with massive private student-loan debt -- yet still you are
doing your level best to create an economic climate in America in which
middle-class Americans are precluded from making life decisions for
reasons other than money. It's not just
public defenders or schoolteachers your craven economic policies
antagonize;
the
"forty-seven percent" you spoke of recently, and with such evident
disdain, include hundreds of thousands of war veterans and active-duty
servicemen and servicewomen, all of whom have given up (as I did and do)
potentially lucrative careers in the financial sector in order to
directly serve their country instead. You apparently believe none of us
ought to have entered lives of public service when more monetarily
rewarding options were in the offing; we ought to have bigfooted around
markets flush with invisible assets -- markets that don't actually build
anything but stock portfolios and Swiss bank accounts -- as you did for
so many years. Shame on you for such a disgraceful dismissal of the
call to service that is central not only to all religious faiths, but to
American secular culture and (more specifically and dramatically) to
the legal profession you so quickly turned away from.
With
all due respect, Governor, it's your values, not those of veterans or
public schoolteachers or public defenders, which are absolutely
unthinkable to me. I could never have justified acquiring a degree from
Harvard Law School if it had not been my express intent to immediately
-- immediately, sir, and not in some distant, entirely-speculative
future -- put my pedigree to work largely on behalf of those less
fortunate than myself. In this
respect I am deeply sympathetic to, and stand in
abiding admiration of, the values of another Harvard Law School
graduate: President Barack Obama (HLS '91). I'll never be
half the man our current President is, Governor, but in knowing how it
feels to stand in the midst of one's community while acting daily as a
grassroots advocate for that community, we
are as one. I can't imagine voting into the White House any man or
woman who has not repeatedly sought out that honor and privilege.
Indeed, for all seven years I was a public defender I lived in an
apartment complex primarily reserved for Section 8 housing recipients --
many of whom became, in time, either clients of mine or the parents of
clients. It was important to me to live alongside those I wished to
advocate for -- another privilege I don't believe you've ever had, let
alone invited, as your lavish lifestyle and recent derisive comments
regarding the poorest 47% of Americans make abundantly clear. I daresay
that it is HLS graduates like you, sir, who tar us all as aloof, effete
plutocrats with no stomach for hard battles in the trenches. Writing a
check to charity after decades of padding your own nest egg is just not
the same as standing up every day for the constitutional rights of
under-resourced Americans. While of course none of us are
obligated to serve our communities directly if we don't wish to,
frankly, Governor, I'll be damned if I'll be lectured by you about
responsibility.
I
paid payroll taxes, of course, every year I was a public defender --
which means I paid more in taxes every year I was a modestly-paid public
servant than you did working as a hostile-takeover artist during the
same period. Some years, however, I paid virtually nothing in federal
income taxes due to my dire economic circumstances. These improved in
time -- the pay-scale for a public defender in northern New England is
(unlike elsewhere in the country) remarkably generous, in my
view -- but as I have never governed my life the way you'd govern this
country (that is, by translating human values and capital into empty
economic data), it was at the very moment my finances were
turning around that I began seeking new and (as it happens) even less
lucrative
ways of serving my community. You see,
Governor, I'm a poet: I'm a member of that oldest tribe of humans, the
ones who painted on
cave walls to illustrate for their families and communities that life
and language and our fellow citizens deserve daily glorification in
song, in speech, in image, in verse. Given the shameful way your
Administration handled public counsel services in the Commonwealth
between 2002 and 2007 -- you did all you could to starve the
public-service sector in the state of my birth -- it is no surprise to
me that you aim, too, to destroy public patronage of the arts in
America, as surely poets and public defenders are of infinitely less use
to a civilized society than "management consultants" or (now) career
politicians like you. But it was only because of federal student loans
that I was able to leave the law in 2007 to study poetry at the Iowa
Writers' Workshop, with the hope of one day teaching poetry at the
college level to the next generation of Americans. This was not (lest
the presumed prestige of an Iowa Writers' Workshop degree be
insufficient to
convince you
this career change was not merely entitled folly) done without some
significant consideration. By the time I left New Hampshire for Iowa,
I'd been honored to see my poems published in scores of magazines around
the country, and indeed I received a book contract for my first poetry
collection on the evening of my first class in Iowa City. The point,
Governor, is that I have always sought to offer my services to the
country in whatever capacity I felt best equipped for; that tendency is,
I think, very much in the tradition of American innovation and
excellence. And it explains, too, why voters should assume that you are
uniquely qualified to handle the liquid assets of millionaires but
perhaps little else. (I would say that you are also well-suited to bring
universal healthcare to large populations of needy Americans, as you
proudly did in the Commonwealth just last decade, but as with so much
else you've now abandoned that principle
and deride proponents of universal healthcare as people who "won't
take personal responsibility and care for their lives.") So when I left
middle-class legal employment in the public service sector to make
$13,000/year as a teaching assistant at a public university in Iowa, it
was not because I felt victimized, or entitled, or was chasing an empty
fantasy, but because this country needs qualified artists and art
teachers as much as it needs venture capitalists. I'd seek out work as
the latter, Governor, but I believe your candidacy for the presidency is
prima facie evidence that, as I always suspected, such employment often
leeches the soul of its positive and generative energies.
In
Iowa City I became firmly ensconced in your "forty-seven percent."
After graduating from the Writers' Workshop in 2009, I applied to the
University of Wisconsin-Madison's literary studies doctoral program, as
despite your promises to shutter
the NEA and Department of Education I
still think literature matters in America. I believe, that is, that
public monies are better
spent helping graduate students like me attend master's and doctoral
programs in the humanities, the social sciences, and then hard sciences
than propping up failing
corporations with billions of dollars in corporate welfare. Only people
are people, Governor -- I am astounded that any man of faith, let alone
any husband or father (or strict constructionist of the U.S.
Constitution) could ever believe otherwise.
Not
long after I moved to Madison, I had the opportunity to attend protests
at the Capitol Building relating to Governor Scott Walker's entirely
transparent and entirely political union-busting efforts. (I'm only
thirty-five, Governor, but I'm old enough to remember when terms like
"union-busting" and "voter suppression" were dirty words in American
politics; now they're a de facto element of your party's national
platform.) Those protests were the most civil and good-natured protests
I've ever witnessed -- live or on television -- and looked and sounded
absolutely nothing like their portrayal on your campaign's
quasi-official television arm, Fox News Channel. The one day things got
tense was the day that failed small-state politician Sarah Palin -- a
woman with absolutely no investment in Wisconsin's well-being -- came to
speak. That day the Capitol Square was flooded with out-of-staters, men
and women who'd come to masticate the raw meat ex-Governor Palin is so
fond of throwing willy-nilly into public gatherings. I was heartened to
see my fellow progressives attempting to engage these right-wingers in
polite discussions of public policy. (Never before have I seen a state
population so singularly committed to congenial public discourse as here
in Wisconsin; it makes me singularly proud to live here.) I myself was
speaking with one Palin supporter about the importance of paying
schoolteachers adequately -- at the time I was making $12,000/year as a
composition instructor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, yet Governor
Walker had just signed into law a 10% pay-cut for me and my fellow
instructors in order to avoid raising millionaires' taxes by one cent --
when another Palin supporter, a woman in her sixties or seventies,
pushed her way between us. She put her finger in my face and shrieked
accusingly, "Are you a teacher? Are you a teacher?" I'd gotten out just
two words of my reply -- "Yes" and "I" -- when she
shouted at me at the top of
her lungs, "So _what_! So _what_!" I was taken aback. I paused a
moment, honestly (and uncharacteristically) speechless. "Ma'am," I said,
"the 'so what' is that I'm teaching your children how to write, and
that's an important--" and again she interrupted me to scream "So
_what_!" and storm off.
Governor, that's the America your campaign is promising us.
It's
an America in which the poor have no legal
advocates and unabashed big-government conservatives like you trample
our civil liberties, in which the production of art shrivels and dies,
in which the contributions of public schoolteachers are mocked by
radical ideologues, in which the same unions that brought us weekends
and workplace safety standards are destroyed through calculated
political action, in which it becomes harder and harder to even cast a
vote for one's preferred presidential candidate due to one party's
sinister and un-American political machinations. Governor, when you were
a graduate student you lived off your familial inheritance. As a
graduate student in 2012, I work six jobs -- I'm a teaching assistant at
a public university; I'm a writing tutor in a university writing
center; I'm a freelance journalist for non-profit magazines; I'm a
full-time graduate student in a literary studies doctoral program; I'm a
working poet who publishes his writing regularly (sometimes for de
minimis honoraria); and I'm an education consultant who works (nearly
always pro bono) with young poets and writers applying to graduate
creative writing programs -- and I still make well under $25,000/year.
But I'm also proud to say that I've excelled in every field I've sought
to enter -- two thousand criminal defendants represented in two states
over seven years without a single professional conduct complaint; four
books published, along with hundreds of individual poems, essays,
interviews, and articles -- and I'm nobody's victim. I'm a proud
American, and I believe in universal healthcare as a right, not a
privilege; I believe in increased (not decreased) access to the
franchise; I believe in public patronage of the arts; I believe in
grassroots service to one's community; I believe in counting people as
people rather than consumers; I believe in voting in the best interests
of my country rather than the ephemeral dictates of my own wallet; and
I'll be proudly voting for President Barack Obama's re-election in
November. It is not sufficient to say that as an American I don't share
your values, Governor; it's worse than that: I'm ashamed of your values.
I've spent my whole life trying -- and often failing -- to be a good
man, and so it's unthinkable to me that I would vote for someone whose
public statements and only-cagily-disclosed political agenda evince no
interest whatsoever in either public
or private goodness. President Obama is a man worthy of this nation's
great history of service and humility and individualism; your recent
comments to $50,000-a-plate diners at a pricey residence in Miami
indicate that you are still, all these decades later, best suited to
pushing paper for the well-heeled at places like the Boston Consulting
Group.
It is with this in mind that I eagerly await your return to the private sector on the seventh of November.
Seth Abramson
Seth Abramson is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Northerners, winner of the 2010 Green Rose Prize from New Issues Poetry & Prose. He is also the co-author of the forthcoming third edition of The Creative Writing MFA Handbook . His poems have appeared in such magazines and anthologies as Best New Poets 2008, Poetry, American Poetry Review, and New York Quarterly. A regular contributor to Poets & Writers magazine and The Huffington Post, his essays on poetry, politics, and higher education have been cited online by The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The Economist, The Los Angeles Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, The Poetry Foundation, and elsewhere. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Harvard Law School, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and after six years working as a public defender in New Hampshire recently began a doctoral program in English Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (His blog can be found here.)
