Back in 1992, President George H.W. Bush tried to counter to the growing perception that he was an aloof, out-of touch patrician utterly detached from the economic struggles of the American people. But his laughably awkward pronouncement to voters, "Message: I care," only served to confirm their suspicions. Now twenty years later, Bush 41's empathy-challenged successor Mitt Romney is trying to overcome the same "anyone for tennis" country-club image that is threatening to derail his quest for the White House. Sadly for Romney, the common man makeover isn't convincing anyone that, as Bill Clinton famously put it, "I share your pain."

On Tuesday night in Denver, Governor Romney unveiled his new "compassion-by-proxy" approach, using his father's humble roots as a substitute for his own life of privilege:

My father never graduated from college. He apprenticed, as a lath and plaster carpenter, and he was darn good at it. He learned how to put a handful of nails in his mouth and spit them out, point forward. On his honeymoon, he and Mom drove across the country. Dad sold aluminum paint along the way, to pay for gas and hotels.
There were a lot reasons my father could have given up or set his sights lower. But Dad always believed in America; and in that America, a lath and plaster man could work his way up to running a little car company called American Motors and end up Governor of a state where he had once sold aluminum paint.

Unfortunately for Mitt, George Romney didn't make his money from money, but by making things. And as Rick Perlstein documented, George Romney, a presidential hopeful who released a dozen years of his own tax returns because "one year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show", didn't forget who helped make him rich at AMC:

As a CEO he would give back part of his salary and bonus to the company when he thought they were too high. He offered a pioneering profit-sharing plan to his employees. Most strikingly, asked about the idea that "rugged individualism" was the key to America's success, he snapped back, "It's nothing but a political banner to cover up greed."

Of course, Romney's effort to deploy human shields to cover his own seeming lack of humanity doesn't end there. His wife Ann is a fixture at Romney events, engaging voters and introducing her husband each primary night. As the AP reported in September, "Romney using wife's story to connect with voters," calling her:

An acknowledged blessing for a 2012 White House contender who struggles to shake a robotic image. Friends and foes alike say she makes him seem more genuine.

But Ann Romney, too, has often cemented her husband's reputation as a man of privilege disconnected for the lives of the people he would serve. As the New York Times explained her favorite activity in 2007:

Dressage is a sport of seven-figure horses and four-figure saddles. The monthly boarding costs are more than most people's rent. Asked how many dressage horses she owns, Mrs. Romney laughed. "Mitt doesn't even know the answer to that," she said. "I'm not going to tell you!"

As it turns out, Ann Romney doesn't want to tell you about her family's great wealth, either. As ThinkProgress noted last month, Mrs. Romney was none too happy about Mitt having to follow in the footsteps of every modern presidential candidate and release his tax returns:

At an event at Freedom Tower in Miami this afternoon, Ann Romney said "unfortunately" the world now knows how "successful in business" Romney has been.

Besides, Mrs. Romney insisted just days before, none of that really mattered anyway:

"I understand Mitt's going to release his tax forms this week. I want to remind you where our riches are: our riches are with our families," Ann Romney said. "Our riches, you can value them, in the children we have and in the grandchildren we have. So that's where our values are and that's where our heart is -- and that's where we measure our wealth."

Despite his best efforts, Romney's "I'm you" defense is going to be a very hard sell. After all, voters' obvious disdain for him has less to do with their mythical "envy" over his money and how he made it than their belief that Mitt Romney lives in a different world and simply doesn't care about theirs.
For confirmation, Mitt need only look to his ally and Massachusetts GOP Senator Scott Brown. Brown didn't merely call on Romney to release his tax returns (which he grudgingly announced he will do on Tuesday), but rejected any notion that the former Governor is like "you."

"He's in a category, a lot of those folks are in categories that we don't really understand."

Which is why Romney's repeated efforts to depict himself as a "man of the people" have failed so completely - and so comically. Romney, who this week explained that over the last decade "my income comes overwhelmingly from some investments made in the past," joked with jobless voters that "I'm also unemployed." The $250 million man similarly declared himself "part of the 80 to 90 percent of us" who are middle class, when just the "not very much" $374,000 he earned in speaking fees last year puts him in the top one percent of income earners. Whether or not he really enjoys firing people, Mitt Romney almost certainly was never in danger of either "getting a pink slip" or pooping in a bucket during his time as a missionary at a toney Paris mansion. (Who else would lecture a child about his plans to divvy up his estate among his 16 grandchildren or endorse rooftop canine waterboarding?) And there's no doubt that the man who spent $12 million to buy his third home (none of which are located on "the real streets of America") didn't win any friends when he offered this prescription for the housing market crisis:

"Don't try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom, allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up."

And Romney holds that view not just because he believes "corporations are people, my friend." As he told a group of struggling homeowners in Tampa, that makes banks foreclosing on them people, too, and suffering ones at that:

"The banks are scared to death ... they're feeling the same thing you're feeling."

It's no wonder Mitt Romney believes income inequality should only be discussed in "quiet rooms" and his tax returns not discussed at all.
It's bad enough that Romney pays only about 15 percent of his income to Uncle Sam each year, a rate well below most middle class families. Worse still, the notorious "carried interest" exemption for private equity managers Romney wants to preserve taxes him not at the ordinary income rate of 35 percent but at the capital gains rate now half of what it was only 15 years ago. And as it turns out, most of Mitt's millions each year come from his controversial former employer, Bain Capital. As a man with a $100 million, tax-free trust fund for his sons, millions more stashed in offshore Cayman Island accounts and an almost unprecedented IRA worth tens of millions of dollars, Mitt Romney is benefitting from a tax system that provides him with advantages few Americans knew existed. And to add insult to injury, Romney wants to eliminate the estate tax, creating a likely windfall topping $80,000,000 for his heirs, a gap in the U.S. Treasury that would have to be plugged by all other Americans.
Which is why Mitt Romney wasn't doing himself any favors when he brushed off repeated requests to reveal his tax returns:

"I don't put out which tooth paste I use either. It's not that I have something to hide."

But Mitt Romney does have something to hide. It's not his wealth or how he made it, or even that (as one expert on tax enforcement and offshore investment put it) "his personal finances are a poster child of what's wrong with the American tax system." As a quick glance at his economic proposals confirms, you'd win $10,000 if you bet Mitt Romney that he is "not concerned about the very poor" - or the middle class, either. Like George H.W Bush before him, Romney just isn't like you. (Claiming instead that President Obama is "out of touch", "detached" and like Marie Antoinette doesn't change that fact.) And no matter hard he tries to conceal it, Mitt Romney simply can't share your pain.