(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-01-15 16:48

WASHINGTON -- Quick quiz: Which citizen belongs to the middle class?

_A factory worker making $60,000.

_A lawyer making $200,000.

_A single mother of two earning $19,000.

Answer: All three — and just about everyone else under the sun, according to the world of presidential campaign politics.

Right and left, the presidential hopefuls are casting themselves as champions of a middle class that they define according to their own convenience. We're talking No Taxpayer Left Behind here.

In appealing to the common man and woman, they can abandon common sense.

Even Democrat John Edwards, noted for plain talk about plain old poverty, says the thrust of his proposals is for the "middle-class pillars of saving, work" and "regular families."

These candidates are on to something. Americans love to think of themselves as middle class, and so it has become an elastic concept that draws in everyone between dirt poor and filthiest rich.

In the political calculus, it means this: The middle class is everyone who would be helped by my plan. And no one who would be hurt.

Republican Mitt Romney takes the middle class conceit probably the farthest, well into six figures.

"We're going to have to reduce taxes on middle-income Americans immediately," he says.

"Zero rate on middle class savings," he says, "to make it easier for the middle class to save."

An ode to little pink houses?

Not exactly. His tax plan says anyone with adjusted gross income under $200,000 — that's after certain deductions — should be relieved of all taxes on capital gains, interest and dividends. Certainly $200,000 a year doesn't buy what it used to. But it's still easy street.

Romney and the others break no rules here, as much as they stretch credulity.

There's no accepted standard of what constitutes the middle class, although it's safe to say that the multimillionaire former Massachusetts governor and most others in the race are well above it in their own lives.

Economist Anil Puri at California State says the "middle-middle class" could be understood to include households taking in $35,200 to $52,800, which is 80 percent to 120 percent of the national median income.

He concedes that's not a perfect definition because "such middle class households cannot actually afford the middle class lifestyles." But it's a long way from $200,000.

Essentially, middle class is a state of mind and both parties want a piece of it.

Democrats define the middle class down, while Republicans define it up.

Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Edwards propose to pay for their expensive programs mainly by raising taxes on people making more than $200,000. Their tax plans are tilted to the working poor and the elderly but branded middle-class relief, making the reach of their tax cuts sound broader than it is.

The GOP hopefuls want to keep President Bush's expiring tax cuts for people of all incomes. That inevitably saves rich people the most dollars while relieving people of average income of a noticeable share of their tax burden, too.

Republicans are also determined to get rid of the estate tax.

They prefer to call it the "death tax" because that does not make people think of mansions where Jeeves answers the door.

Romney goes farther than the rest in wanting to end taxes on savings and investments for people making all the way up to $200,000.

Historian Henry Brooks Adams, grandson and great-grandson of presidents John Quincy Adams and John Adams, said in 1908 that the U.S. middle class is a very broad phenomenon. Don't expect, however, to see his words quoted by those trying to become president 100 years later.

"As for America," he said, "it is the ideal fruit of all your youthful hopes and reforms. Everybody is fairly decent, respectable, domestic, bourgeois, middle-class, and tiresome. There is absolutely nothing to revile except that it's a bore."

The British, more class conscious than Americans, have had their own struggle figuring out what middle class means. Lawrence Sutton once won a British newspaper contest for the best definition:

"Wearing overalls on weekdays, painting somebody else's house to earn money? You're working class. Wearing overalls at weekends, painting your own house to save money? You're middle class."

In Campaign '08, owning the paint company counts as middle class, too.