Editor's note: This is one in a semester-long series of entries by students participating in the EN330 "political communication" course at Saint Anselm College. Students will be invited by Fr. Jerome Day, O.S.B. to submit their weekly logs to the Saint Anselm College blog, offering a glimpse inside "America's Classroom" as we approach the 2012 New Hampshire primary.

Samantha Glavin
November 21, 2011

When we say actions speak louder than words, do we really mean that numbers do? We’re a society fascinated by statistics—the how manys, the how muchs, the percents—sometimes to the point where the true meaning of the numbers themselves are obscured in a cynical fog. And nowhere else in American society is this fascination with numbers more apparent than in politics. In our scrutinizing culture, numbers have a power to communicate messages as powerfully as speeches or statements. We see it in polling, we see it in the stock exchange, but we also see it in how much the bill is at the end of the meal. If a president spends what society deems as “too much” on the renovation of his house, if a first lady buys a necklace that’s worth a small fortune, or if a candidate surprises his wife with a trip to the Mediterranean, observing citizens are up in a huff, denouncing this man or woman’s values and their ability to lead a nation.

This obsession was brought to my attention by an article I saw on the New York Times’ website, “Romney Finds It’s Not Free to Move About the Country”¹. The article describes in 252 words the private and commercial flight expenses run up by presidential candidate Mitt Romney for his third fundraising quarter. The author writes, “The Romney campaign spent $233,812 on private air travel—over $100,000 more than he spent on commercial flights… over all, $369,848.75 on total air travel” and goes even more in-depth about the expenses paid to specific airlines, analyzing Romney’s spending habits as if he was running for a “2012 National Model Citizen of Middle Class Spending” award and not for President of the United States. And Romney’s been under fire before, for example in August when he was criticized for the cost of renovations on his mansion. Clearer now than ever, there are inextricable ties planted in the public’s mind between how much someone spends, and how worthy he or she is to lead others.

Don’t get me wrong—I understand the thought process. The majority of us aren’t millionaires, and someone spending ludicrous amounts of money on various luxuries doesn’t exactly speak to the “I’m with the common, hardworking man” ideal. But I think we need to be more media literate about how we approach these numbers, and also be conscious of the widespread big spending in Washington as a whole—it’s not just Romney, or Republicans, or Democrats doing it, and as a matter-of-fact, our own country is deep in the hole for its own extravagant spending. You can pull numbers out of anywhere, and make them mean anything. It’s estimated that the Obamas spent $73,781.50 on Michelle Obama’s six-and-a-half hour trip to Spain in 2010². Joe Biden ordered government officials to review and cut-back on their spending after news broke that $16 muffins (yes, that’s per muffin) were served at Justice Department conferences³, this while his first-in-command is serving $400 bottles of wine at a state dinner. And there’s a historical precedent to all of this as well. Sarah Palin is attacked for supposedly buying a new wardrobe costing a hundred thousand dollars, while Jackie Kennedy spent absurd amounts of money on clothing, trips, decorations, and other personal items, but despite this became a lasting national icon.

Should any of these numbers really mean anything to us? Reporters rattle off an endless stream of expenses and costs against both parties, but in the end, I’m only left nauseated. How a public figure spends his or her money is interesting, and, to a degree, relevant. But in a time when consumers feed off rapidly changing, easily digestible megabytes of information, this numbers game has only become distracting to the real issues facing our evolving (or devolving) country. We are becoming more ignorant to the actual messages coming out of the mouths of the individuals who are leading us, somewhat blindly, into an unknown and worrisome future. Unless we decide to investigate the context of the matter more thoroughly, it’s time to put the calculator down.

¹http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com, “Romney Finds It’s Not Free to Move About the Country”, Ashley Parker, Oct. 15, 2011.

² http://www.cbsnews.com, “Michelle Obama Criticized as ‘Modern-Day Marie Antoinette’ Over Spain Vacation”, Brian Montopoli, Aug. 5, 2010.

³http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk, “White House Acts Over Muffin-Gate”, Sep. 22, 2011.