Jim Hightower

Old Mitt Romney went to a farm, e-i-e-i-o. And on that farm he came a cropper, e-i-e-i-o!

At the time, his staff probably thought that putting Mitt on a farm was a good idea, since he was perceived as being completely out of touch with regular folks – more concerned with getting extra tax breaks for multi-millionaires than with helping families who're struggling just to make ends meet. So, what better way to show his down-to-earthiness than to go to the heartland for an "American Gothic" photo-op with one of those hard-hit farmers who're suffering from this year's devastating drought? Thus, to demonstrate his oneness with America's tillers of the soil, Romney jetted away to the Iowa farm of Lemar Koethe.

Well… he went to one of Koethe's farms. It turns out that even when Romney tries to get grassrootsy, he still prefers to do it with fellow millionaires. Koethe owns not one, two, or merely several farms, but 54 of them. And forget the Old McDonald's image, for farming is not this guy's main business – he is a real estate developer and entertainment mogul who runs his own event center.

And Koethe has something else that probably drew Romney to bond with him: a huge house with an underground garage equipped to hold multiple vehicles. It doesn't have a car elevator, as Romney's Southern California mansion does, but Koethe's garage does have its own car wash bay. And no doubt Mitt would envy Lemar's 35-foot spiral staircase that rises from the entry foyer to the main living area of his home, which is called "the spaceship house."

It probably strikes Romney as normal that a "farmer" would have 54 farms, be a millionaire real estate operator, and live in a spaceship house. E-i-e-i-o – that pretty well sums up how in-touch he is with the real world of workaday Americans.