In 2011, at the Iowa State Fair, presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave a pitch for why fairgoers should support him in the upcoming caucuses. 1 As an audience milled around him munching on fried snacks, Romney promised to be responsible.“We have to make sure that the promises we make in Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare are promises we can keep, and there are various ways of doing that,” he said.“One is we could raise taxes on people—” 2 Before he could continue, Romney was interrupted by a heckler who had his own idea of who should pay down the nation’s financial obligations:“Corporations!” 3 Romney flashed a smile.“Corporations are people, my friend,” he said. 4 When another audience member responded with a fact—“No, they’re not”—Romney persisted. 5 “Of course they are,” he said. 6 “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?” 7 This answer prompted the first heckler to erupt into a belly laugh while a third responded,“It goes into their pockets!” 8 At this point, Romney glowed with the triumph of a law professor giving the closing blow of a Socratic dialogue.“Whose pockets? People’s pockets!” he said before returning to entitlements. 9 As soon as his remarks hit YouTube, Romney’s “corporations are people” comment was ridiculed as an inept defense of corporate personhood: the idea that corporations deserve the same legal rights as human