Fátækur varaforseti?

Um leið og ég var að athuga um tölvupóstinn minn rakst ég á áhugaverða grein sem fjallaði um ríkidæmi verðandi varaforseta Bandaríkjanna, eða öllu heldur skort þar á.

Í greininni er fullyrt að það skipti engu máli hvor nái kjöri, McCain eða Obama, varaforsetinn verði sá "fátækasti" í Bandaríkjunum um langa hríð.

Síðan fer greinarhöfundur nokkuð yfir fjármál bæði Biden og Palin, en bæði öldungaþingmenn og ríkisstjórar þurfa að gera nokkra grein fyrir fjármálum sínum.

En ýmislegt athyglivert kemur í ljós og í greininni má lesa m.a.:

"Compared with the piles of financial disclosures from would-be U.S. presidents I've pored over in recent months, the filings of America's vice-presidential candidates Sarah Palin and Joe Biden are astonishing.

Palin, the Alaska governor whose selection by John McCain for the Republican ticket has riveted both sides of the U.S. political aisle, would be the poorest vice president in recent memory. Biden, Barack Obama's almost-taken-for-granted running mate, would be as well.

Rather than multimillionaires with sprawling assets tucked into tax-free bonds (Obama) and lavish estates (McCain) or with gigantic incomes from speeches and books (Hillary Clinton), the Republican and Democrat VP hopefuls are the folks next door. Palin carpools to school basketball games. Biden struggles to pay off college loans for his sons.

In a political world usually divided between the rich and superrich, the Palins and Bidens are decidedly middle class. And their investments are on the same scale as yours and mine."

"Not counting their homes, which are exempt from reporting requirements, the America's VP candidates would struggle to find $1 million between them. Their retirement nest eggs -- which for both candidates are almost their entire net worth -- are modest in the extreme, amounting to somewhere between $300,000 and $400,000 for each family."

"Palin's public image as a down-to-earth, effusive hockey mom is reflected in her finances. Her state disclosure form is handwritten. It confesses she accepted a "gift" from an Alaska lobbyist in the form of carpooling with another mother of a sixth-grader. She also, as governor of the largest U.S. state, accepted an ivory puffin mask worth $2,200 from Calista, an economic-development group of Native peoples.

She earns $125,000 a year as governor, and Todd Palin earns almost exactly as much from seasonal jobs, including salmon fishing, oil-rig maintenance and his championship snowmobiling in Alaska's annual Iron Dog race."

"In 2007, the period covered by the latest financial disclosures, Biden earned a little less than $300,000 from the Senate ($165,200), part-time teaching jobs and a book advance. His income and portfolio reflect his ranking as one of the poorest U.S. senators.

He is encumbered by several loans, including one dating to 1989 that was used for a son's college expenses. It was valued between $15,001 and $50,000 at the end of 2007. Unlike Palin's filing, which under Alaska rules can be detailed down to the penny, Biden's is on a U.S. federal form that organizes finances into broad ranges, such as $100,001 to $250,000."

"It's hard to tell where these two would rank historically in terms of vice-presidential wealth, but they're certainly in the same rut as Walter Mondale. While running with Jimmy Carter in 1976, he revealed a net worth of $77,000 and joked he wanted the job "because I need the money."

Those who followed Mondale -- George H.W. Bush, Dan Quayle, Al Gore and Dick Cheney -- ranked much higher on the wealth meter.

From a class point of view, virtually all of the families in my neighbourhood are very much like the Palins and Bidens, living modestly but well on incomes in the low six figures.

Families like the Obamas and the McCains live on the other side of the tracks -- literally, in my New Jersey town, where the mansions are higher up the Short Hills for which the place is named.

Whether my neighbours tuck in their children at night cooing, "You could grow up to be vice president," I do not know. (More likely they say, "Please don't go into politics." That's what I always cooed.)

But it's refreshing to come across a pair of politicians who truly do understand our situation, because they share it. And it's too bad one of them could be the only such person in Washington come next January."

Þannig er það.  "Miðstéttarvaraforseti" verður í Hvíta húsinu, hver sem úrslitin verða.  "Ríkisbubbarnir" eru í forsetaframboði.