I’m with Andrew Sullivan on what Time’s Joe Klein writes about presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s response to the very old…OLD…bullying story whose legs Romney could have cut off by dealing with it as a more skillful and candidate politician could do. Klein points out the absurdity of Romney saying he can’t remember an incident remembered by more than three news sources who were classmates in which another teen was held down while Romney forcibly cut his hair. It goes beyond needing a suspension of belief to accept that account: it requires a partisan mind trying to squelch anything negative about someone on your political sports team. And that is the bottom line.
As Sullivan notes (go the link and read his whole post) that is going on right now.
Klein gives us our political Quote of the Day, the last 2/3 of his post:
It comes during the same week that he [Romney] claims credit for saving the auto industry, even though he opposed the bailout that made possible the structured bankruptcy he favored. It comes the same week that he expresses his opposition to gay marriage, even though he promised to be a more aggressive proponent of gay rights than Ted Kennedy when he ran for the Senate in 1994 — of course, it’s possible that Romney has evolved in the opposite direction as President Obama, and most Americans, on this issue, but I doubt it. It seems a day can’t go by without some Romney embarrassment or bald-faced reversal of a former position.
I’m still waiting for the moment when Romney actually tells the truth about something difficult. He could have said, “You know, I’ve been troubled by the Cranbrook episode for most of my life, and I feel relieved, in a way, that it’s come out now. I did a really stupid and terrible thing. Teenage boys sometimes do such things and deserve to be punished for them. What I most regret is that I never apologized to John and won’t be able to now that he’s gone, but let me apologize to his family and friends. Bullying is unacceptable under any circumstances. It is especially unacceptable when prejudice — against one’s race, ethnicity or sexual orientation — is involved. If elected President, I will try to atone for my teenage behavior by campaigning against bullying all across this country. What I did back then should be an example of how not to behave. I hope we can all learn from this. I know I have.”
Instead, Romney has a near perfect record of cowardice, obfuscation and downright lies. It shows enormous disrespect for the intelligence of the public.
There is another issue here as well. Romney has been a profound disappointment to those moderates, centrists and independents who actually liked him when in his incarnation of a moderate (later moving rightward) Governor of Massachusetts. During the primary season when to many independents and centrists those running against Romney in the Republican primaries seemed to conjure up this melody, an argument in favor of Romney was that he’d be unpredictable but could turn out to be more respectful of the increasingly discredited value called “consensus.” Sure, he was talking like a “severely conservative” candidate, but he’d move to the center. To many non conservative voters, Romney was perceived as “dangerous” as most of the other candidates since he would be (it was assumed) a more traditional Republican, which was why he was supported by the party’s Bush family wing.
The issue now is no longer whether he’ll move to the center. Even if he does there is another issue. I suspect, increasingly, many voters who might seriously consider voting for a SERIOUS Republican who could keep his own base and peel off independents and more moderate Democrats will write Romney off. Why? Because his utterances indicate words don’t carry any weight with him and that he can’t stand up to the most conservative forces within his own party.
In terms of courage and candor, Mitt Romney isn’t this:
He’s more like this:
And on his claim that he can’t remember the bullying incident, he brings to mind the image of the photo on top.
Two lower photos via shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.