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"Corporate Wife, Very Rich Woman" Ann Romney Gives RNC Speech
By
Jen Chung
Published Aug 29, 2012
Modified Aug 29, 2012
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By
Jen Chung
Published Aug 29, 2012
Modified Aug 29, 2012
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Last night, mother of five, grandmother of 18, MS-sufferer and breast cancer survivor Ann Romney rallied support for her husband and the Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, trying to soften his image as a corporate raider. Telling everyone how she first went to a high school dance with him 47 years ago, she said, "He will take us to a better place, just as he took me home safely from that dance." But do you know who thinks Saint Ann is full of it? Fox News contributor Juan Williams!
In Fox News' post-speech discussion, Williams said, “Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann Romney, on the other hand looked to me like a corporate wife. And you know the stories she told about struggle, eh, it’s hard for me to believe. She’s a very rich woman and I know that and America knows that.” From Politico:
Fox News hosts Bret Baier replied, “Wow, OK,” and Megyn Kelly asked Williams, “What does that mean, corporate wife?”
“What does it mean?” Williams replied. “It looks like a woman whose husband takes care of her and she’s been very lucky and blessed in this life. She’s not speaking, I think, for the tremendous number of single women in this country, or married women or separated — actually she did not convince me that you know what, ‘I understand the struggles of American women in general.’”
“Is that the same speech you heard Brit?” Baier asked Fox News commentator Brit Hume.
“Uh no. I think that was the single most effective political speech I’ve ever heard given by a political wife,” Hume said.
You can read Ann Romney's speech here or watch it below. She mentioned that after getting married in college, they "moved into a basement apartment" and "ate a lot of pasta and tuna fish... Then our first son came along. All at once I'm 22 years old, with a baby and a husband who's going to business school and law school at the same time, and I can tell you, probably like every other girl who finds herself in a new life far from family and friends, with a new baby and a new husband, that it dawned on me that I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into." Of course, why mention that Mitt was attending Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School at the same time?
And while Ann Romney said Mitt's success wasn't handed down, it was definitely helpful that his father was wealthy: In a 1994 interview with the Boston Globe, Ann Romney revealed how the struggling young couple survived: "Neither one of us had a job, because Mitt had enough of an investment from stock that we could sell off a little at a time. The stock came from Mitt's father. When he took over American Motors, the stock was worth nothing. But he invested Mitt's birthday money year to year -- it wasn't much, a few thousand, but he put it into American Motors because he believed in himself. Five years later, stock that had been $6 a share was $96 and Mitt cashed it so we could live and pay for education."
While the NY Times' TV critic Alessandra Stanley was dazzled by Ann Romney's speech ("Ann Romney is so gifted at politics, she may actually make her husband look a little bad"), conservative Ross Douthat at the Times wrote today, "[Her] speech was actually most effective when it was confirming the impression that Romney is less a relatable 21st century kind of guy than an unusual sort of throwback - the last of the WASP aristocrats, the latter-day heir of the Cabots and Saltonstalls and pre-Texas Bushes, offering himself up to serve a country where his species long ago ceased to rule," noting the strongest part was when she said, "No one will work harder. No one will care more. And no one will move heaven and earth like Mitt Romney to make this country a better place to live."
Douthat argues, "This is not an ideological or policy-oriented argument, calculated to reassure conservatives worried that Romney is too moderate or moderates worried that he’s too conservative... Instead, it’s an argument for Ann Romney’s husband that could have been made on behalf of the old White Anglo Saxon ruling class with whose Social Registered members he shares so many qualities. You don’t have to love him, the more effective parts of her speech implied, or relate to him, or even always necessarily agree with him. But you can trust him with the presidency, because he’s suited to public service, and he was born and raised and trained to do this job."
Tagged
ann romney
corporate wife
election 2012
harvard
mitt romney
privilege
republican national convention
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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