I Learned Something Today!

Michelle and Barry Messiah think they're more like me than the other two candidates. He's so right.

I can remember, in my youth, when Mom took me to Indonesia, and later, when I was in a lush prep school in Hawaii. Those were tough times for us. Later, I was forced to move in with my grandparents-one of whom was a bank vice president. I know-how tough can one guy have it? That's not all, though.

After leaving the prep school, I enrolled first at Columbia for undergrad, then at Harvard for law school. Sure, things were tough there-once, someone disagreed with my moot court arguments. After that, in my early career, I had to work at a thankless job. I don't know if I could have made it without my fellow Ivy Leaguer wife, who had a tough job as a diversity outreach coordinator.

Times sure were tough-especially the six months I took off from work to write my memoirs in my thirties. Eventually, I was lucky enough to meet the right people-a real estate developer, a kindly professor, and a minister-who helped me get into politics. Sure, the $240,000 my wife and I made eight years ago seems like a lot, but have you seen the price of arugula, or how much dance and piano lessons for the kids are? And don't get me started on the payments on our house, which cost a million bucks!

Really, anyone could have lived that life. It's been tough but we've persevered. How could anyone think that is elitist?