Mitt Romney Lies About Vietnam

"I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there and in some ways it was frustrating not to feel like I was there as part of the troops that were fighting in Vietnam."

- Mitt Romney, Boston Globe, 6/24/07

"I was not planning on signing up for the military. It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam."

- Mitt Romney, Boston Herald, 5/2/94

Okay, when I saw these two quotes, on Townhall.com this morning, I thought: This looks kind of bad. John McCain has a pretty clear record on Vietnam -- he bombed it -- whereas Mitt Romney spent the turbulent '60s proselytizing to the French. Now we find out that Mitt Romney both passionately wanted to serve his country under arms and had no interest in doing anything of the sort. At the very least, it doesn't seem terribly consistent. To a biased reader, it might even seem like he's full of shit.

But I knew that couldn't be right. So I read it again.

Here's where I'd gotten confused. Mitt Romney "longed" to be in Vietnam, but his "desire" was to be not in Vietnam.

Is this really a contradiction? Only if you don't appreciate that longing and desire are two totally different things.

Socrates knew they were as different as different could be. That's why he called one thumos and the other epithumetikon, the dark and light horses that pull the chariot of the lover's soul.

Mitt Romney famously snapped at Mike Huckabee: "Governor, don't try to characterize my position." (You might as well try to calculate Pi, Gomer.) In this case, though, to understand what Mitt Romney is getting at, you just have to go back and reread Pheadrus.

"Now, when the charioteer (Mitt Romney) beholds the vision of love (Vietnam), and has his whole soul warmed through sense, and is full of the prickings and ticklings of desire, the obedient steed (thumos, the desire to go somewhere other than Vietnam) then as always under the government of shame, refrains from leaping on the beloved; but the other (epithumetikon, the longing to be "in the shit"), heedless of the pricks and of the blows of the whip, plunges and runs away, giving all manner of trouble to his companion and the charioteer, whom he forces to approach the beloved and remember the joys of love."

(Only by taming both horses, by synthesizing longing and desire, can the soul of the lover follow the beloved in modesty and fear. Not unlike how Tony Blair used to look at George Bush.)

So you see? It all makes perfect sense, when you understand that Mitt Romney was talking about two entirely different parts of his soul.

Like the half that doesn't hunt, and the half that hunts.

It's all about the id and the superego. Of course Mitt wanted to get shot down over Hanoi and locked in a box for five years -- who wouldn't? -- but his better angels told him to go to Cannes and spread the Word of the Lord, except to black people.

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The Fighting Romneys Extra

It's been six months since Mitt Romney was asked why none of his sons were in Iraq, and answered:

"One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president."

And he's still a candidate for the nomination. (Okay, barely.) Let's pretend a Democratic politician had said the same thing. How long would it have been -- in hours -- before he was forced out of public life forever?

Comments

[luciadulu]

Hm... wonder why Mitt's people haven't been trumpeting the fact that Rush Limbaugh endorses him? Maybe for the same reason that Rush hid his endorsement away from his homepage (yes, I had to look just to see what the squirrel nut zipper gallery is doing today)?

I know it may be too much to hope, but are the nutjobs on the right finally being treated as the irrelevant blowhards they are? FINALLY?

Thank God.

[Sidewhispers]

Chris, why didn't you just cut to the chase and say Mitt is full of it.

[Upperleftcoast]

To Mitt: Hero of the Bush League

Of neocons and “patriots” the ones I most abhor
Are rabid right-wing girlie-men who’ve never been to war
They strut and sputter “Treason!” when their poster-boy is panned
But shirk the pain of battles fought by soldiers they have damned

So off them all, these neocons, ship them off to fight!
Reveal for all the feckless gall of cowards on the Right
Whose flag-draped bluster ill conceals the stripe of yellow hue
That separates these “patriots” from heroes true and blue

[Sumocat]

What's the big deal? "In many respects" he wanted to go. "In some ways" he was frustrated to not be there. But for the most part, he was glad to not be in the middle of a seemingly endless conflict. He's a complex man. Both a polished aristocrat and a hunter of varmints, if you will. IF elected President, I'm sure part of him will regret screwing us over as he screws us over.

[ProfessorDuh]

But Romney lies about everything. He watched his daddy march with King when he didn't march. He's the lifelong hunter who never hunts. He's the abortion rights supporter who was never pro-choice. He's the illegal alien fighter who employs illegal aliens.
He's been on every side of every damn issue, and shrieks like an outraged dowager when he's confronted with the video evidence of the forcefully stated, completely false position he intoned yesterday.
Not only would I never trust this man, I would never trust anyone who ever trusted him. They all have a flashing neon sign over their heads that screams, "Ulterior Motives!"
There's a reason why even the Republican sewer-swimmer candidates all hate Romney.

[eddiegeorge]

Glenn Greenwald did a similar job on Romney a little while back:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/11/15/romney/index.html

It's not as funny, but Glenn's a lawyer not an Ancient Greek scholar.

There's some good stuff in the Greenwald comments; basically -

Mitt 1.01 avoided the draft to go teach the French about polygamy (Hey, M. Sarkozy, go Mormon you can have your cake and eat it!);

Mitt 2.01 took a student deferment;

Mitt 3.01 avoided the draft because his number didn't come up in the lottery.

And whilst I think you are correct to show the difference between "longed" and "desire"..­. the Mitticism here is of course "in many respects".

As I see it, Mitt is saying he got screwed by the system and that's why he couldn't serve in Vietnam. He wanted to, he didn't even have a pilodinal cyst, he just kept on not getting called up because that's the way, in many respects, the system denied him his opportunity to sacrifice.

[feo]

Romney is merely a more stylish Dick Cheney. Getting to Vietnam was pretty easy--all one had to do was volunteer, something that apparently did not occur to either Cheney or Romney.

[BetterDeadthanRedState]

The most consistent thing about Mitt is his inconsistency.

[hopeless277]

Just the fact that he is still a candidate speaks volumes about the disintegration of our country. At any other time in the history of the world, the United States would be viewed as a rogue nation and be under attack from the rest of the planet. That we are not also speaks to the disintegration of our country. Romney is not the disease but a symptom of what money alone can accomplish. Next time, they will be ready. Next time(or hell, maybe even this time) nothing will prevent the richest 1% from decoupling itself from this country and leaving the rest of us to starve.

[ichbineinhofer]

Methinks the magic underpants are cinched a bit too tight.

[LiberalMathProfessor]

I don't think that liberals, Democrats, Free Thinkers, and most any of the other people I'd rather know would ever fall for Romney's being so full of shit. Consider not only the source (Mitt, the full of shit and full of self, self-loving egomaniac who vastly over-estimates his self worth, oh, so vastly), but consider also his intended audience; those poor souls, poor suckers and slobs just waiting to be fleeced. I need to take a page from Chris's book and find more humor in things these days!

[nyboomer]

As Mort Zuckerman said, I will consider voting for him as I know who he is? You can't listen to Romney and get any sense who is today, was yesterday wnd will be tomorrow.

[erevjim]

So Mitt wanted to go fight in 'Nam. I hear there's a current war going on that would welcome him with open arms. But I'll bet he is just like Bush who would rather picture himself as the rebirth of Marian Morrison (John Wayne) than actually putting his life in harms way.

[Jaybot]

Like fish in a barrel ain't it?

[Slpeasy]

As usual, it's easy for the leaders of a country to carry on with wars but have no real personal involvement. Mr. Romney's is but another example of this - easy to go on and on about Iraq but certainly not willing to put any of his family at risk. I cannot stand this man and to me he embodies the quintessential "politician" - slippery, flippy, and absurd.