It's hard to imagine a story the Republican candidate's campaign would less like the media to focus on -- with the possible exception, thanks to the relentless Gail Collins, of Seamus on the car roof -- than his mystery tax returns, which is why, of course, it's so delightful that the pitiless media spotlight is circling just that spot.
The Massachusetts era of Democratic political brilliance ran from JFK through John McCormack and Tip O'Neill, abruptly crashing to a halt in 1988 with the hapless Michael Dukakis, the anti-Kennedy, a black hole of uncharisma destined to be remembered for two things -- his bloodless debate reaction to the proposition that his wife was raped and killed, and, most definitively, the "Snoopy in the tank" video. Sixteen years later we had John Kerry windsurfing while letting himself -- an actual war hero, as opposed to the Smirking Chimp, with his affinity for going AWOL -- be put on the defensive about his military service.
But both of them pale in comparison to the astonishing spectacle of Willard Mitt ("Mittens") Romney, with his preternaturally pitch-perfect ability -- witness his less than triumphant foreign jaunt -- to say or do exactly the wrong thing. Mittens' basic discomfort with himself approaches the Nixonian (though their backgrounds could hardly be less similar), and we have three more months of his egregious hilariousness -- and three debates -- to look forward to.
At long last it's the Republicans who are stuck with one of these pathetically miscast losers, and don't think they don't know it. Even, maybe especially, among the upper echelon of his increasingly lunatic party, Mittens is not just barely tolerated but is roundly despised by many of the people whose job it is to sell him, and yet who are incapable of hiding their lack of enthusiasm about it. They can't stand him, viscerally, for the same reason any average sane being can't stand him: He is personally insufferable.
He is a compulsive liar, and never more so than when he tells himself he deserves to be the most powerful man in the world. Everything Mittens says is patently false, whether it's about something political -- this idiotic meme we've endured throughout Obama's term about his "anti-Americanism" (i.e. BLACKNESS!) -- or something more of the essence of who he is, like his absurd declaration that he found the earlier kerfuffle about his taxes "amusing." Yes, how they must have giggled in Mittland at those little people thinking they could make him tell them anything about himself that he felt the need to keep hidden -- which, apparently, is pretty much everything, except for the odd fact like that he went through a shootin' phase (though only, it turned out, against "small varmints") or that he thinks that in Michigan "the trees are the right height." His sublime gaffes -- be they verbal, tonal, or political (or, in his case, sometimes all three at once) -- just keep coming. He can't stop himself, it's who -- or more truthfully, what -- he is. If "corporations are people, my friends," well, some people seem more like body-snatched corporate androids.
Mittens' people are surely unthrilled with their inability to hide his cluelessness -- and, it happily seems, his wife's -- about how ordinary humans (in this case, the 99.5%) think, speak and feel. So the Democrats smell a certain kind of blood in the water -- Massachusetts blood, the anemic kind they've been periodically spilling over the past quarter-century -- and suddenly they're all emboldened and they've managed to grow a pair. (It would be nice to see Obama govern with a fraction of the ruthlessness he campaigns with.) And who gets to whip them out on the table? Wussy Harry Reid.
Even Jon Stewart took him to task, but Reid, despite that savage scolding, is channeling LBJ's brutality, however bland the presentation -- who knows, maybe he read the Caro -- and is doubling down on the claim, indisputable by anyone but Mittens himself, that the presumptive Republican nominee for president "hasn't paid any taxes for ten years." And, of course, being the quintessentially terrible candidate that he is, he plays right into it by continuing to refuse to provide the very information that could prove his accusers to be scurrilous liars. Now, why on earth would he do that, unless ...?
Of course, there can be no other ending than the release of his tax returns. The beauty of it is that the longer he stonewalls, the more solidified becomes the notion, loudly and repeatedly trumpeted, that he's hiding something, and the weaker he'll look when he finally and inevitably capitulates and releases them, by which time the media-fueled certainty that they must be damaging will have the public primed to see them negatively. And they will not disappoint.
If you have any belief in any kind of God, pray to Him, Her or It that Mittens is still hiding his tax returns when he and Obama step on stage for the first debate.
"The principles that Ronald Reagan espoused are as true today as they were when he I spoke them." (May 25, 2010)
2. "Many, many years ago, I had a dear close family relative who was very close to me who passed away from an illegal abortion. It is since that time that my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we cannot force our beliefs on others in that matter. And you will not see me wavering on that." (November 2, 2002)
"Roe v. Wade has gone too far." (June 25, 2007)
3. "We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts; I support them. I won't chip away at them; I believe they protect us and provide for our safety." (September 24, 2002)
"I'm after the NRA's endorsement." (April 5, 2007)
4. "I think there is need for economic stimulus" (January 4, 2009)
"I have never supported the President's recovery act, all right, the stimulus, no time, nowhere, no how." (September 28, 2011)
5. "I've been a hunter pretty much all my life." (April 4, 2007)
"Any description of my being a hunter is an overstatement of capability." (April 10, 2007)
Obama has essentially governed from the Right since inauguration, and he's still pilloried by the same folks he's capitulating to.
Clearly the opposition is not political. What's left besides race?
f and f
What does Governor Romney have to show for his four years in the corner office in Boston? An abysman job creation record (47th out of 50 states) and Obamacare.
Votes count just like head hairs count. They are lost one at a time.
Given the amount of hurt it is doing to his campaign (Stephen Colbert's programme recently suggested that a "generic Republican" would beat Obama but Romney is behind and Romney should change to a generic Republican) one can only suppose (and I reckon pretty much all of us has made the same speculation) that the returns contain information that would hurt Romney more than not releasing them, the only two scenarios that fit is that the tax paid is zero or very low.
There is also another thing that I can not discuss due to space reasons that being whether the returns, given the number of ways tax can legally be avoided and that half of our politicians are millionaires, is whether the returns fully disclose the person's financial position anyway.
Having said that I am not as sure that the comments are about what might be in the returns are as unwarranted as Stewart says they are. It is a long standing tradition, one that Romney must have known about and implicitly agreed to, to release at least 5 years of returns. He has failed to do so and despite all the comment and the hurt to his campaign that it must be doing he still refuses to release and when asked questions about it point blank refuses to answer, promises to get back with more information and doesn't or says that it is not our right to know.
Until 1936, Landon had no track record of conservatism as Governor of Kansas. Though fiscally conservative, he took distinctly liberal positions on civil liberties, regulation and conservation. As Arthur Schlesinger put it "He occupied a middle ground between the old fashioned Republicans and the New Deal." Nor was his initial intent to criticize the New Deal on grounds of Socialism or tyranny, but instead cost, pace and administration.
All of this changed once Landon received the nomination. Under the direction of campaign manager John Hamilton, Landon moved steadily to the right and by the end of the campaign, Landon's stump speeches routinely promised to cut spending while simultaneously promising to preserve or even expand the agricultural and Social Security programs in full.
As with Landon, Romney is at the mercy of the base. Party leaders favor him for his moderate track record but he's been forced to shift right to appease the base. Voters are supposed to believe his private sector experience is necessary to fix the economy even as he runs away from his time at Bain or any specific proposal.
For both candidates, a conflict between personal and party politics make a coherent platform impossible. Nor has the right been able to formulate a compelling argument against Obama's track record.