Sssh! Be Vewy Qwiet - Mitt's Hunting Wabbit
The Presidential campaign process gets more demeaning all the time. It's been painful to watch Mitt Romney try to reinvent himself as the kind of guy his advisors must think will be popular with white Southerners. Mitt's the patrician son of a General Motors CEO turned Governor of a Northern industrial state. He's not going to fool the Southern Baptists into thinking he's somebody he's not. He's coming off more like Elmer Fudd than Elmer Gantry.
Sssh! Be vewy qwiet ... Mitt Womney's wunning for Pwesident.
First he told the world he's a "lifelong hunter." Then his helpful staff explained he's hunted exactly twice. So he challenged his own office's statement and stuck with his "Hunter4Life" claim. When reporters learned he's never had a hunting license, Romney said that he hadn't needed one because like "Jed Clampett" he's spent his life hunting small "varmints."
This wealthy son of privilege is no Jed Clampett. Au contraire. He's more like Mr. Milburne Drysdale, the guy who owned the Clampetts' bank in Beverly Hills. He can't change that by claiming to have whiled away his leisure hours in hot pursuit of jackrabbits and rodents.
"He does not own a firearm, despite claiming to earlier this year," observes the AP. What kind of a wacky electoral process have we created when a candidate has to lie about owning a gun to look like a credible President? I fired guns as a kid, but that hardly qualified me to be the Leader of the Free World.
"Womney's" troubles aside (from now on he'll always be "Mitt Womney" to me), there's a deeper question here: How low can the Presidential debasement spectacle take our would-be leaders before they decide it's not worth it?
It's not an electoral process anymore. It's "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here."
No Presidential candidate has topped John McCain so far for sheer self-humiliation. He's been so eager to woo the Right that he hired the vituperative blogger who wrote "he makes my bowels clench" ... about John McCain. His Baghdad "shopping trip" was only the latest embarrassing spectacle for this once-admired (by me) American.
It's becoming increasingly clear that, while Sen. McCain and I are very different people - he was a hero, for one thing - we have something important in common: Neither one of us will ever be President of the United States.
As for Mr. Romney, he's been descending into the pit of degradation for some time now. He's been playing a one-man game of Twister with his own policy positions ever since he declared for the Presidency. And he fawned over Ann Coulter only minutes before she made her offensive 'faggot' comments about John Edwards. Sure, he chided her for those words - but when he supplicated himself before her she had already made dozens of other, even more offensive comments: about Democrats (Bill Clinton's a "rapist"), Muslims (who should be "forcibly converted"), and reporters (some of whom should be "executed").
It's especially sad to watch such spectacles when you're aware that the candidate in question knows better. Romney is, by all accounts, a pretty decent guy. This is what he believes needs to be done to become President, that's all - and he wants very much to be President.
Democratic candidates aren't immune to practicing this ritual self-debasement, as Hillary Clinton's staged waffling on critical issues like torture has demonstrated. Still, Democrats haven't been forced to make humiliation the extreme sport it's become on the GOP side.
Some candidates, like Obama and Edwards, still campaign with class and dignity. If Chuck Hagel declares for the Republican nomination, I suspect he will too. The rest of them seem to be joining Mr. Romney in becoming Elmer Fudds - or "schmoos," those Li'l Abner cartoon characters who turned themselves into anything you wanted them to be.
Mitt Romney was attending Ivy League schools back when Jed Clampett's shotgun was bringing forth "black gold ... Texas tea ...oil, that is." Surely this highly educated man has read Guildenstern's words in Hamlet:
"The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream."
He was warning Hamlet that ambition can be the stuff of nightmares, that it can rob you of your very essence as a human being.
Presidential candidates should take those words as fair warning.
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