The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat too often reverts to mindless labels, such as calling Keystone pipeline protesters part of the “decadent left” (see posting for December 4, 2011). In the Sunday Review section for January 15, however, he makes a nice point about the current debate within the GOP over Bain Capital.  Bain has a positive role to play in a capitalistic system, he argues. That doesn’t excuse Romney from being insensitive to the costs associated with globalization over the past 25 years.

“…for Mitt Romney to frame criticisms of Bain as just ‘the bitter politics of envy,’ as he did last week,” Douthat writes, “displays a tone-deafness that could cost him the presidency. No one—and certainly no politician—who has profited so immensely from an age of insecurity should ever appear to be lecturing the people who’ve lost out.”

Douthat suggests that Romney—and I would argue the GOP generally—“needs to prove to anxious voters that he and his party have more to offer than just Bain capitalism alone. To win the White House, he’ll need to promise not only competition that leads to growth, but growth that leads to broadly shared prosperity. To defend his revolution, he’ll need to show that he’s reckoned with its costs.”

Here I’d emphasize “broadly shared prosperity.”  In recent months, the news has been filled with information about an income gap that extends back in time well before the current recession.  When mobility rates are worse in America than they are in Europe, then assumptions need revision that the path to the American dream awaits anyone who works hard.  As Douthat’s comments suggest, Romney has yet to acknowledge the problem, preferring to fall back on bromides better suited for an earlier era. The costs of globalism are real. Both parties need to address them.  The occupy movement has changed the conversation, forcing even the GOP to address issues of income inequality. It remains to see whether Romney has a clue about how to grow the economy and assure benefits across the income spectrum.