Oh, the cosmic injustice of it all. Barack Obama spent the critical hours before and after Hurricane Sandy dropping by the headquarters of FEMA and the Red Cross. He held conference calls with top state officials and sent hundreds of millions of dollars in relief money their way. On Wednesday, he will be surveying the wreckage and personally comforting residents in New Jersey with his new BFF, Chris Christie. And Mitt Romney? He retrofitted a previously-planned Ohio “Victory Rally” into a Don DeLillo-esque “storm relief event,” replete with canned-food drive.

Under normal circumstances, you’d chalk up the contrast to the perks of incumbency: The president gets to look in-command after a disaster (unless of course he doesn’t), while the challenger has to sit around inventing politically-correct photo-ops. But in this case there’s actually some deeper significance. That’s because, unlike his rival for the Oval Office, Romney has suggested that government should have a rather limited role helping disaster-stricken people, and that private citizens should pick up the slack.

I’m not just talking about Romney’s apparent support for mothballing FEMA and devolving its functions to states or private contractors. This struck me as a pretty clear primary-campaign pander, though Romney should still own every bit of it. I’m talking more about Romney’s personal philosophy of private initiative versus public responsibility, as epitomized by his own record of paying taxes and charitable giving.

Romney, you’ll recall, frequently sends less than 15 percent per year to the U.S. Treasury, despite an annual income in the tens of millions of dollars and a net worth in the hundreds of millions. Much of this is accomplished through a rather aggressive use of tax loopholes, some of which we know about and many more of which we presumably don’t. When pressed on this generally legal but unseemly exercise, Team Romney often emphasizes that, combined with his large (and commendable) charitable contributions, Romney is in the habit of forking over heaping portions of his income to other entities. For example, the campaign noted in a recent release that, for 20 years starting in 1990, Romney’s “total federal and state taxes owed plus the total charitable donations deducted represented 38.49% of total [adjusted gross income].” In 2010, Romney only paid an effective federal tax rate of 13.9 percent but gave another 13.8 percent to charity. In 2011, the figures were 14.1 percent in federal taxes and 29 percent to charity.

Support thought-provoking, quality journalism. Join The New Republic for $3.99/month.