Mitt Romney is a very rich man. According to financial forms released this week and reported in major newspapers, the former Massachusetts governor earned between $17 million and $69 million last year from a list of investments that covered 47 pages. His immediate family owns trusts worth as much as $350 million.

The question is whether this staggering wealth helps or hurts Romney’s pursuit of the presidency. The answer is both, and that’s because Americans feel profoundly ambivalent on the subject of money when it comes to picking their leaders.

Voters admire candidates who have made a bundle in business, who have met a payroll and mastered the economy. Besides, most Americans want to be rich themselves someday. But they also fear that great affluence shields people like Romney from understanding the problems of average Americans. Can a man with 47 pages of investments really know what it’s like to worry about losing a job or paying medical bills?

The wealth question reaches beyond the practical into the realm of theology and myth. A core belief of early New England settlers was the Protestant Ethic: the idea that thrift and hard work were prime earthly virtues; and even better, that material success was a sign of God’s grace and eternal salvation.

Equally American is the idea that poverty is an ennobling experience, that suffering breeds virtue and builds character. And both sides of this story were on display at the recent Iowa straw poll for Republican hopefuls.