At LAT, "Mitt Romney fumbles common touch regarding money":
Mitt Romney has made his successful business career a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, saying his hands-on experience in corporate America is precisely what the country needs.
But when it comes to showing sensitivity to the economic anxiety many Americans are feeling, he has proven to have a less-than-deft touch.
A fresh example came Tuesday as Romney campaigned across South Carolina for the state's Saturday primary and discussed his personal income and the possibility, under pressure, of releasing his 2011 tax return for public examination.
Listing his various sources of income, Romney mentioned the speakers' fees he had earned in the run-up to his latest presidential bid. "Not very much," he said.
A review of Romney's latest financial disclosure forms shows he collected more than $374,000 in such fees during the year ending in February 2011 — more than seven times the income of the average American household.
Earlier in a conversation with reporters, Romney estimated that he paid close to 15% in federal taxes last year, a level well below that paid by many middle-class Americans and one that suggests that much of his income is taxed at the lower rates available to investors.
"Over the last 10 years," he said, "my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past."
Candidates' wealth and taxes have long been staples of political campaigns, especially when they come from well-to-do backgrounds. The most recent ultra-rich candidate — 2004 Democratic nominee John F. Kerry, married to an heir to the Heinz ketchup fortune — was routinely criticized as an out-of-touch elitist fond of habits, like windsurfing, not shared by the masses.
Romney has gone out of his way to demonstrate common-man tastes, like flying cut-rate airlines, staying at thrifty hotels and eating at sandwich joints. But displaying a common touch — a requisite for the comfortably off — is not always that easy, as he has repeatedly demonstrated.
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