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"Romney’s life story is a liability. Will America elect the Man Who Isn’t There?"
Michael Tomasky on the Problems With Mitt Romney’s Biography
From his family and faith to his careers in business and politics, Mitt Romney’s life story is a liability. Will America elect the Man Who Isn’t There?
-snip-
Let’s go through the steps, all the normal elements of biography. Can he bring up his childhood? No. He had a privileged childhood, and while lots of privileged youths were perfectly wonderful kids, the evidence we have is that he was a privileged jerk. He violently lopped off that poor gay kid’s hair. The second he starts talking about his childhood, that story will reemerge with a vengeance. So childhood is out.
How about his father? Well, George Romney was an admirable man, so maybe it’ll fly with the casual voter for Mitt to say he wants to be just like pops. But more informed voters know the ugly truth, which is that he’s not half the man his dad was, that his father stood for things, took great political risks, opposed his party on civil rights. Dad wasn’t a wingnut, and the wingnuts know it, and therefore they would be repelled by such talk for other reasons. So he has to be careful about old George, too.
Okay. Faith? That’s the biggest no-no in the box. He must find this one cruel, since his religion is evidently pretty important to him. But if Romney opens the door to discussion of the LDS church, then it’s open season on all the preposterous things that Mormons are raised to believe—whether he’s going to stash a year’s worth of canned goods in the White House basement and so on. This is the very last thing on earth (or Earth, as opposed to Kolob) that he can discuss.
What else—his career? He can say, as he does, that he spent his career in business, but he has to keep it vague. He’s not going to be mentioning Bain Capital very much. Yes, Cory Booker and Ed Rendell stepped on the White House’s Bain attack, and the White House has dropped it for now. But that doesn’t mean Bain is a winning ticket for Romney either. That has little to do with Booker or even the White House and more to do with Romney himself, the way he overstated the jobs he helped create. So the thing he spent 25 years doing is at best a wash.
His stint as governor? Not a chance. He did nothing for the state economically, he lost interest in the job after a couple of years, and he left with an approval rating in the mid-30s. The one good thing he did as governor, of course—the health-care bill—he runs away from like leprosy.
-snip-
Well gosh, then, what about the family? Ann is certainly sympathetic—breast cancer and multiple sclerosis. But then there’s this dressage business. I watched a little dressage the other night. Hey, to each her own. But let’s just say that it’s not a good sign when the candidate’s wife has a hobby and the campaign tries to cry foul when The New York Times describes it on the front page. That doesn’t mean there’s something problematic with The Times; right-wingers howled about that, but they did so because they know it means there’s something problematic with the hobby. The boys? I guess they’re clean, although the oldest one does have that weird name.
This is completely unprecedented. Every aspect of his life story is in some way compromised. It’s not that he’s led a dishonorable life. But he’s led a remote and rarefied life, a life lived behind heavy doors and conducted in “quiet rooms,” as he famously said of the place where inequality is best discussed. It’s precisely in those quiet rooms where most Americans are ritually screwed, where decisions were made up through September 2008 that nearly destroyed the economy. That’s his America, and as he has shown with his unintended but brusque insults of working people, the folks in those quiet rooms don’t want to know the rest of us, and most of us don’t want to know them. It’s very striking that his Bain compatriots all testify to what a great guy he is, while Massachusetts state legislators, for example, found him on the whole aloof and obnoxious.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/17/michael-tomasky-on-the-problems-with-mitt-romney-s-biography.html
From his family and faith to his careers in business and politics, Mitt Romney’s life story is a liability. Will America elect the Man Who Isn’t There?
-snip-
Let’s go through the steps, all the normal elements of biography. Can he bring up his childhood? No. He had a privileged childhood, and while lots of privileged youths were perfectly wonderful kids, the evidence we have is that he was a privileged jerk. He violently lopped off that poor gay kid’s hair. The second he starts talking about his childhood, that story will reemerge with a vengeance. So childhood is out.
How about his father? Well, George Romney was an admirable man, so maybe it’ll fly with the casual voter for Mitt to say he wants to be just like pops. But more informed voters know the ugly truth, which is that he’s not half the man his dad was, that his father stood for things, took great political risks, opposed his party on civil rights. Dad wasn’t a wingnut, and the wingnuts know it, and therefore they would be repelled by such talk for other reasons. So he has to be careful about old George, too.
Okay. Faith? That’s the biggest no-no in the box. He must find this one cruel, since his religion is evidently pretty important to him. But if Romney opens the door to discussion of the LDS church, then it’s open season on all the preposterous things that Mormons are raised to believe—whether he’s going to stash a year’s worth of canned goods in the White House basement and so on. This is the very last thing on earth (or Earth, as opposed to Kolob) that he can discuss.
What else—his career? He can say, as he does, that he spent his career in business, but he has to keep it vague. He’s not going to be mentioning Bain Capital very much. Yes, Cory Booker and Ed Rendell stepped on the White House’s Bain attack, and the White House has dropped it for now. But that doesn’t mean Bain is a winning ticket for Romney either. That has little to do with Booker or even the White House and more to do with Romney himself, the way he overstated the jobs he helped create. So the thing he spent 25 years doing is at best a wash.
His stint as governor? Not a chance. He did nothing for the state economically, he lost interest in the job after a couple of years, and he left with an approval rating in the mid-30s. The one good thing he did as governor, of course—the health-care bill—he runs away from like leprosy.
-snip-
Well gosh, then, what about the family? Ann is certainly sympathetic—breast cancer and multiple sclerosis. But then there’s this dressage business. I watched a little dressage the other night. Hey, to each her own. But let’s just say that it’s not a good sign when the candidate’s wife has a hobby and the campaign tries to cry foul when The New York Times describes it on the front page. That doesn’t mean there’s something problematic with The Times; right-wingers howled about that, but they did so because they know it means there’s something problematic with the hobby. The boys? I guess they’re clean, although the oldest one does have that weird name.
This is completely unprecedented. Every aspect of his life story is in some way compromised. It’s not that he’s led a dishonorable life. But he’s led a remote and rarefied life, a life lived behind heavy doors and conducted in “quiet rooms,” as he famously said of the place where inequality is best discussed. It’s precisely in those quiet rooms where most Americans are ritually screwed, where decisions were made up through September 2008 that nearly destroyed the economy. That’s his America, and as he has shown with his unintended but brusque insults of working people, the folks in those quiet rooms don’t want to know the rest of us, and most of us don’t want to know them. It’s very striking that his Bain compatriots all testify to what a great guy he is, while Massachusetts state legislators, for example, found him on the whole aloof and obnoxious.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/17/michael-tomasky-on-the-problems-with-mitt-romney-s-biography.html
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