Tim Scott takes precisely the wrong lessons from his inspiring life story. By Paul Waldman

Tim Scott takes precisely the wrong lessons from his inspiring life story. By Paul Waldman — Read time: 4 minutes

Columnist|

May 25, 2023 at 2:45 p.m. EDT

When Sen. Tim Scott announced his run for president on Monday, the South Carolina Republican leaned hard on his life story: He was raised by his hard-working divorced mother. He struggled in school until a local businessman became his mentor and showed him the way to success. And he eventually rose to become a U.S. senator. All very inspiring.

Unfortunately, Scott takes precisely the wrong lessons from his own life story, using it to justify policies that undermine the ability of others to achieve what he did, or anything close to it.

The problem with Scott’s story lies in his own exceptionalism. He wants people to simultaneously believe that he’s extraordinary and should therefore be president and that in America, anyone can do what he did. And anyone most certainly cannot.

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This theme runs through Scott’s speech and his whole candidacy. His grandfather picked cotton, and he is a senator, so “I’m living proof that America is the land of opportunity and not a land of oppression.” Similarly, his mentor taught him “that anyone from anywhere at any time could rise above their wildest expectations.” This is how he sums it up:

We live in the land where it is absolutely possible for a kid raised in poverty, in a single-parent household, in a small apartment, to one day serve in the people’s house. And maybe even the White House. This is the greatest nation on God’s green Earth.

Scott employs the word “possible” again and again. But to judge how our society works and how we might make it better, the question isn’t whether an unusual story such as Scott’s is possible; it is whether the system is actually providing real opportunity for everybody.

Here’s what it took for Scott to succeed: the tireless work and commitment of his mother, the intervention of mentors and his own exceptional talents. A lot of remarkable things had to align for him to avoid a life of struggle and disappointment. Fortunately for him, it all did.

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This is one of the fundamental truths about America: If you come from a background like Scott’s, you have to be extraordinary to succeed. Yet the lunkhead child of a rich family has a far better chance of achieving “success” than the brilliant child of a poor family.

The upper echelons of American society are filled with mediocre children of privilege whose path was greased in a hundred ways. And yes, among them are a few people who grew up poor and had to work twice as hard to reach the same place. Sonia Sotomayor, who grew up in a housing project in the Bronx, sits on the Supreme Court next to Neil M. Gorsuch, son of a member of Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet and a graduate (like Brett M. Kavanaugh) of Georgetown Prep.

Do you think their elementary school classmates have equally prosperous lives today? And if not, is it because Gorsuch’s elite cohort just worked harder than Sotomayor’s? Or might it be that young Neil and his highly privileged classmates could count on going to top colleges and securing very lucrative jobs even if their abilities were less than remarkable?

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Now let’s zoom out. If Scott is right, then the United States should be the country with the greatest social mobility. That is, people who start out in poverty should be able to move to the middle and upper classes more frequently than in other countries.

Yet that’s not at all the case. According to data gathered by the World Economic Forum, the five countries with the highest social mobility are Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland, all of which have systems of social support that are far more robust than ours.

The United States ranks 27th. Here’s how we compare to some of our peer countries (to keep the charts manageable, I’ve included the 10 largest countries in the European Union, plus Britain, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Canada):

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We’re not the worst, but we’re far from the best. And on inequality, the United States does even more poorly. By one metric — the amount of national wealth held by the richest 10 percent — the United States is the most unequal of all these countries:

Other measures of inequality produce similar results. Yet conservatives like Scott don’t seem to see a problem in those charts, at least not one that deserves any effort to change through policy. That’s why extraordinary stories like Scott’s are deployed as a rationale for the status quo, one in which tens of millions of Americans exist one paycheck away from financial catastrophe. Should we provide health insurance to everyone, the way all our peer countries do? How about a higher minimum wage? What if we just gave every kid free lunch in school?

Absolutely not, says Scott and the rest of his party. After all, just look at what’s possible! Don’t ask for a higher minimum wage or expanded health coverage. If you haven’t achieved prosperity, it must only be because you haven’t been tugging hard enough on those bootstraps, like he did. Meanwhile, how about another tax cut for the deserving rich?

Scott’s story may be inspirational. But Americans who struggle don’t need inspiration. They don’t need to be moved, stimulated or uplifted. They need a society that lets them achieve economic security even if they’re not superstars. And that’s something Scott is not offering.

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