Gov. Mitt Romney is a very rich man. To be sure, he deserves to keep as much of his wealth as is consistent with the welfare of the nation whose laws allowed him to amass so much. Various news outlets such as CNN and NPR relating his statement that he cares about neither the very rich nor the very poor, but instead the 90 to 95 percent of Americans who are struggling, refer to the statement as a gaffe.

I think Romney meant exactly what he said.

There are larger issues at stake in his comment than his acquiescence to our system of Social Security and a safety net and his apparent willingness to concede that, despite President Barack Obama’s presidency, the rich are doing very well for themselves.

Contemporary American politics is merely interest politics. That goes for whether politicians support the rich, the poor or the middle class. The problem is that we equate what is best for America as what is best for a majority, preferably by a wide margin, of the American people.

The public interest — the American interest — is something completely different. It is completely different from the British, German, Israeli or Chinese national interest. To the extent that a problem is one of money, jobs or the economy, it is not a problem for the American polity to resolve.

The little economic problems of the shopkeepers and the job-makers are not unique to American soil. They are not unique to the American people. Any person, anywhere in the world, confronts the same struggle for survival and prosperity. American problems — and ones for American politicians and laws, if not informal agreements and customs among American people — are the ones that arise from Americanness. They come from participation in American cultural and political life.

The same way there is a collective experience to being a human being, with its emotions of love, hatred, joy and depression; the same way there is a collective experience to being part of a given religion, sharing in centuries-old traditions, singing the same hymns, knowing the same holy verses, there is a collective experience to being American.

Problems that are not part of American uniqueness should not be objects of the American government’s attention. Problems that are not part of British or Russian or Chinese uniqueness should not be objects of the British, Russian or Chinese governments’ attention.

When issues begin to damage the way we interact with one another, then they deserve the attention of our lawmaking political institutions.

Some problems, no matter how miserable they make us, should not be addressed by an allegedly republican government.

Seventy-one percent of Americans think abortion should be regulated in at least some instances. A plurality, 46 percent, of Americans disapprove of same-sex marriage. Eighty percent of Americans think the government should do more to address the problem of global warming. The day after “Obamacare” was passed, a plurality of Americans, 49 percent, supported the bill.

The New York Times recently reported that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire and retaining spending caps would lead to an increasingly shrunken budget deficit. It would be some $1.1 trillion for this year, $585 billion next year, and $345 billion in 2014.

The effect of controlling that problem, however, would be unemployment rising to 9.2 percent.

The trouble is that Republicans, such as Romney, want to have their cake and eat it too. In addition to shouting at the top of their lungs and jumping up and down about the deficit and national debt, which truly are national problems that deserve our attention, they want to put Americans to work.

The CBO is presenting us with a choice, it seems: We can address a truly national problem, or we can put the public resources of us all to work for the benefit of individual Americans.