“Dreams Of His Father”: Mitt Romney’s Personality Problem
Let me give you the lowdown, one overlooked reason why Republican Mitt Romney will lose the presidential race Tuesday: the man Mitt himself. He can’t overcome his own character.
For 11 months of 2012, he had many chances to say something that was charming, witty, funny, or moving. But what a sour and dour vibe all the way.
We Americans don’t like that, especially in tough times—remember Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s jauntiness in the Great Depression? We like to like our presidents, of whatever party. The winning Barack Obama, on the other hand, is generally liked by the electorate, a large advantage in a close contest.
Laughter and light never broke through on Romney’s trail and grail to match the man his father—Gov. George Romney was—perchance to surpass him. It didn’t happen once. His wife Ann tried so hard to humanize him. Yet Romney never bonded with the American people, not even with the base of white men (mostly) who will vote for him tomorrow. Obama, who grew up a fatherless child and spent years searching for dreams from his absent Kenyan father, by contrast, has much more lightness and grace.
Give Romney this: tall, dark, and handsome, the man does look the part—his hair always perfectly parted. We were relieved to see him win the Republican circus freak primary. And yes, we were impressed at his crisp performance at the first debate.
But that’s all I have to say for the uxorious former governor of Massachusetts. The Mormon Organization Man’s excessive greed and ambition barely lurk below the slick surface. He can’t connect with 47 percent of us, by his own admission. A man of the people, he ain’t.
His vexing negativity goes hand in hand with an unwillingness to stick with any bedrock beliefs. The Washington Post ran an excellent editorial denouncing Romney’s “contempt” for voters, and his changing his positions radically over the course of his career. As the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy declared of Romney back in 1994: “I am pro-choice … My opponent is multiple-choice.” The line brought down the house in Boston.
It’s also worth noting that Romney’s peers—men who have vied with him on political stages—can’t stand him. I mean, it’s more than the usual give-and-take, spirited conflict between rivals. Kennedy, famous for having friends and allies on the other side of the aisle, found Romney hard work on a personal level. Sens. John Kerry, Harry Reid, and John McCain—two Democrats and a Republican—are three other senators known to loathe Romney.
The more we got to know you, Mitt Romney, the less we found to like. And in the end, presidential politics is personal.
By: Jamie Stiehm, U. S. News and World Report, November 5, 2012
“Obama’s (Perceived) Transformation”: Please Mr. President, Nothing To The Face
Earlier this month, Ann Coulter took to the airwaves of the Fox News network to denounce the dastardly machinations, large mendacity and mad villainy currently employed by the American president. Barack Obama was “a liar,” Coulter said, a “despicable campaigner” who once claimed the banner of “hope and change” but was now giving the American people “the ugliest campaign we’ve ever had.”
The wordsmith who gave us such nuanced disquisitions as “Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America” holding forth on civility must always be greeted with raucous laughter. But Coulter was actually variegating on a theme. On the same network, Senator John McCain accused the president of promising “hope and change” but actually running “the most negative, most unpleasant, most disgraceful campaign that I have ever observed.”
Obama is “the most divisive, nasty, negative campaigner that this country’s ever seen,” the head of the Republican National Committee claimed, and the party’s presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney, assured his followers that Obama was “going to do everything in his power to make this the lowest, meanest negative campaign in history.”
For those of us who remember the attacks on Obama in 2008, this is a notable shift. Four years ago the book on Obama was not that he would fight dirty but that he would not fight at all. Before Obama became the Great Deceiver of Men, he was a pinot-noir-sipping weakling who was a horrible bowler, marveled at arugula and otherwise failed at manhood. The gospel among Republicans, and even many Democrats, held that Obama was yet another espouser of effete liberalism, a tradition allegedly pioneered by Adlai Stevenson, elevated by Jimmy Carter, apotheosized by Michael Dukakis, and admirably upheld by a windsurfing John Kerry.
“There is in Obama something of the Democratic candidate for president in the 1950s, Adlai Stevenson,” wrote Dick Morris in 2008. Lest you miss what that “something” was, Morris’s column was titled “Obama’s Weakness Is Weakness.” National Review asserted that “Real Men Vote for McCain” and claimed that Obama “projects weakness” of the sort that was “an enticement to bad guys around the world.” In 2008 McCain asserted: “Senator Obama says that I’m running for Bush’s third term. It seems to me he’s running for Jimmy Carter’s second.” Early in Obama’s presidency, Coulter described Obama’s approach to Iran as “weak-kneed” and denounced him as a “scaredy-cat.” Surely such a man would see your all-American daughter sold to Ayman al-Zawahri and the Constitution replaced by Shariah law.
But a funny thing happened on the way to 2012. As it turns out, the ingesting of arugula in no way interferes with one’s ability to have Osama bin Laden shot. Mitt Romney may attack Obama for “apologizing for America” overseas. But the audience for that charge is thin. In polls, Obama consistently beats Romney on national security. A recent Ipsos/Reuters poll found Obama leading Romney on the issue 47 to 38 percent and the campaign against terrorism 50 to 35 percent.
Among the ranks of bullies, the only fair fight is the one that ends with them laughing and kicking sand. And so, no longer able to portray Obama as weak, the authors of Willie Horton, swift-boating and modern day poll-taxing have been reduced to other tactics — among them wildly yelping, “Please, Mr. President, nothing to the face.”
Arugula partisan that I am, I must admit to some glee here. Watching Obama campaign is like watching an irradiated Peter Parker spar with Flash Thompson. It is deceptively easy, for instance, to see Harry Reid’s smearing of Romney not as the unsubstantiated, unevidenced ambush that it is, but as revenge.
That way lies the abyss. I am not simply thinking of Senator Reid’s shadow war, but of the president’s. Obama’s tough guy bona fides were largely built on the expansive bombing campaign he launched against Al Qaeda, a campaign that regards due process and the avoidance of civilian casualties as indulgences.
Let us grant that the execution of Anwar al-Awlaki, said to be the mastermind behind the foiled underwear bomb plot, should not much trouble us. But surely the killing of his 16-year-old American-born son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, and the secrecy around both acts, should.
I like to think that the junior Awlaki’s (reportedly accidental) death weighs heavy on the president’s conscience. In fact that weight does nothing to change the net result — from this point forward the presidency means the right to unilaterally declare American citizens to be American enemies, and then kill them.
During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama earned the G.O.P.’s mockery. Now he has earned their fear. It is an ambiguous feat, accomplished by going to the dark side, by walking the G.O.P.’s talk, by becoming the man Dick Cheney fashioned himself to be.
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Op Ed Guest Columnist, The New York Times, August 18, 2012
“Mitt Digs In Deeper”: Drip-Drip-Drip On Tax Returns Raises A Lot More Questions Than It Answers
I have no idea who is advising Mitt Romney on how to handle questions about his history of paying or not paying taxes. But whoever it is should probably get fired.
Perhaps Harry Reid’s taunts about hearing from a reliable source that Romney stiffed Uncle Sam entirely over the last decade had an impact after all. Otherwise why would he go out of his way to let it be known he paid “no less” than a 13% tax rate during the years for which he is refusing to release his returns?
I mean, 13% is not a high rate for a guy with Mitt’s wealth; certainly nothing approaching the allegedly confiscatory rates the poor job-creators of America are toiling under, making them wonder each and every day if it’s time to Go Gault. And the number raises the rather obvious question: 13% of what? Total income? Adjusted Gross Income? Taxable income? Ezra Klein suggests it may be that last measurement, which may be the only one under which he can claim a double-digit tax burden.
If he intends to gut it out and never release his tax returns, he might be better off just saying “It’s none of your damn business, and if I’d done anything wrong, the IRS would have locked me in leg-irons by now.” This drip-drip-drip of undocumented assertions raises a lot more questions than it answers.
Mitt reminds me of a guy I once knew who was asked in a job interview about his religious practices, which were somewhere between non-existent and hey-I-listen-to-Christmas-music! Instead of admitting that, he kept making excuses to the interviewer (who pretty much thought everyone should be forced to go to church weekly) about his busy schedule and good intentions and so on and so forth. He didn’t get the job, but talked about the interview, and soon gained the nickname of “Digger.” Mitt’s a “digger,” too.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, August 16, 2012
“Romney’s Elitist Snobbery”: Harry Reid Is Right To Focus On Mitt’s Taxes
Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada alleged, both in an interview with the Huffington Post and then later on the Senate floor, that Mitt Romney had not paid taxes in 10 years. The battle continues.
Romney called on Reid to reveal the source for his claim that he has not paid taxes for 10 years, stepping up pressure as two major fact-check sites ruled Reid had no basis for the “incendiary” allegation. (Sidebar: Those fact check sites also ruled that Romney’s claim of creating 100,000 plus jobs had no basis in truth.) Romney said he doesn’t believe Reid has a credible source but urged the Senate Democratic leader to reveal who it is.
“I don’t really believe that he’s got any kind of a credible source,” Romney said. “I don’t know who gave him this line of reasoning, whether it came from the White House or the DNC or a staffer, but he ought to say where it came from, and then we can find out whether that person has any credibility. I know they don’t.”
Reid said this is not about him; it is about Romney and his unwillingness to share his tax returns with the American people. Republicans got on the president and press secretary Jay Carney for not pushing Reid to back off or reveal his source, as if Reid were a child in a daycare center that the Obama administration runs. When I debated my usual sparring partner on the right, talk host Lar Larson, he alleged that Reid was doing this to help the president, calling it “sleazy.”
Reid’s remarks are his remarks. He’s an adult, and is not controlled by some imaginary string between the White House and the Senate, regardless of the right wing’s perception. Romney said that Reid “lost a lot of credibility.” And if that’s the case, Romney should be thanking Reid, not chastising him.
So which is it? A sleazy tactic by Reid to help the president? An unsubstantiated remark by an angry Democratic senator who refuses to leak his source?!
I’ll tell you what it is. It is Romney, continuing to look down his nose at the American people with the elitist snobbery that gets him the low likeability in poll after poll after poll. The same attitude that got both the Brits and the Palestinians angry with him on his world tour. But it goes beyond that.
This goes back to 1973 when then Vice President Spiro Agnew plead no contest to tax evasion. It was then that the American people demanded to see the tax returns of candidates for president and vice president. And although this practice is not a law and is not in our Constitution, it has been a tradition that has been agreed to by all presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle.
We all know Romney’s father provided numerous years of tax returns. We know that Ronald Reagan provided six, Sen. John Kerry 20, Sen. Bob Dole 29, and President Obama 12! And Mitt Romney? One. Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, when running for president, provided two years of tax returns, the lowest provided by any presidential candidate left or right. (The only exception was Gerald Ford, who was sworn in as president after the resignation of Richard Nixon—and he even provided a summary of years of returns.) And McCain has provided other tax returns for Senate campaigns throughout his career. Romney has provided the American people with one year (2010) and a summary for 2011.
So, this is not about Reid’s source as Romney wants you to believe. Romney should thank Reid for the diversion. This is about what voters, both left and right, have asked Romney to do, which has been to do exactly what presidential candidates have been doing for decades: provide their tax returns.
For a man who says he wants to run this country like he ran his companies, we need to know: How much did you make? Give to charity? Pay in taxes?
Last week Romney said that Reid should “put up or shut up,” Romney needs to heed his own advice. And in doing so, would prove if Reid’s comments are true or false. Romney, America’s waiting.
By: Leslie Marshall, U. S. News and World Report, August 8, 2012
“Complete Disdain For The Electorate”: Lies, Damned Lies, And Mitt Romney’s Ads
What happens to political and journalistic norms when a national campaign decides to blow past the run-of-the-mill cherry-picking of facts, distorting of policies, and playing in the gray area between truth and untruth, and instead simply runs hog wild into malicious deception and prevarication? We’re going to find out.
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign has displayed a special level of shamelessness in its ads and attacks since its very first one, when it ran a clip of Barack Obama saying “if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose”—a clip from 2008 when Obama was quoting an aide to then GOP nominee Sen. John McCain. His campaign has also taken other Obama quotes out of context (“you didn’t build that” and “it worked”) to portray the president as having said things he flatly didn’t say. More recently they accused the Obama campaign of trying to curtail the voting rights of members of the military (a thoroughly debunked accusation—USA Today, for example, called it “a falsehood“).
But the Romney campaign’s latest line of attack, highlighted by a television ad accusing President Obama of attempting to “gut” President Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform law, is a new level of—what’s the phrase?—making stuff up. (Or as I put it in my column today, the ad is “grotesquely, pants-on-fire, Pinocchio’s nose just punched a hole in the wall misleading.”) The facts of the matter are that the Obama administration did signal a willingness last month to extend welfare law waivers (an act allowed in the law) to states if they come up with new, promising ways to improve the law’s goal of getting people into jobs. Oh and the governors who specifically asked for these waivers? They were Republican. And they’re not rogue Republicans either—the idea of giving states greater flexibility to deal with welfare programs is a very traditional one in the GOP, endorsed by many, many Republican officials over the years (including, by the way, then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2005).
Those are the facts of the matter. They are only tangentially related to the fantasy spun in the Romney ad, where expressing a willingness to issue waivers to try more effective ways to get people into jobs becomes “a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements” so that welfare recipients “wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you a welfare check.” The ad concludes that “Mitt Romney will restore the work requirement,” which of course hasn’t been removed in the first place.
You can almost hear the discussion in Romney headquarters: “Hey, the Obama administration is talking about issuing welfare waivers.” “Are they gutting welfare reform?” “Well, no—” “Doesn’t matter. Gutting welfare reform is a great wedge issue we can use against him with working class whites. Let’s cut the ad!”
(In the interest of fairness, while we’re on the topic of mendacity, Harry Reid’s assertion that he has inside information regarding Mitt Romney’s super secret tax returns doesn’t pass the laugh test. But this is not yet parity: Reid is being irresponsible and I believe duplicitous, but his one whopper doesn’t measure up in breadth or systematic-ness with the Romney campaign’s growing track record.)
And as I argue in my column today, if this is where we are in August, imagine how bad things will be in October. If we’re at the point right now of simply making stuff up, what kind of fantabulations will we be assaulted with then?
Steve Benen summed it up nicely at the Maddow Blog yesterday:
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign has presented the political world with an important test.
How are we to respond to a campaign that deliberately deceives the public without shame? … The Republican nominee for president is working under the assumption that he can make transparently false claims, in writing and in campaign advertising, with impunity. Romney is convinced that there are no consequences for breathtaking dishonesty.
The test, then, comes down to a simple question: is he right?
Part of the answer will have to do with how the press views and does its job (and Jay Rosen has a smart take on that question here). But part of it will also have to do with the voters. The Romney campaign’s gambit plays on two things: One is the instinct on the part of the press to treat such disputes as he-said-he-said in the name of objectivity (hence much coverage of the welfare ad as being Team Romney charge followed by Team Obama retort with little discussion of the facts).
But underlying the cynical belief that they can game the press is an even more contemptuous and condescending belief in the basic laziness and stupidity of the American people. The Romney campaign knew that its welfare ad would be roundly blasted by the portion of the media that does fact-checking. But they’re counting on voters to absorb the charge and not pay attention to the details or follow closely enough to get the facts.
It’s a flavor of disdain for the electorate. We’ll find out over the next few months if it’s successful.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, August 8, 2012
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