During a town hall meeting in the 1992 presidential election, a woman in the audience asked whether the candidates could truly claim to be able to solve America’s problems if they had no experience of the economic woes facing ordinary people.
The incumbent, George HW Bush, a wealthy Washington insider, struggled to respond. He could not connect with the question or the woman asking it, nor understand how his lack of experience with poverty might make him unable to comprehend the reality of the lives of millions of Americans.
