The Myth of Mitt Romney

There are two myths about Mitt Romney that are curious. One is that he is a "really extreme extremist." But in reality, if you look at the entirety of his career, Romney may be the most moderate Republican nominee since Jerry Ford. While Romney has moved to the right over time, Romney, to steal from Jonah Goldberg, speaks conservative as a second language. There is no doubt that he is not a movement conservative. Of course, we hear over and over how the Republicans have been captured by the radicals. There is no doubt the party has moved right over the last three decades. But let's look at all Republican presidential nominees since Reagan. George H.W. Bush was no movement conservative nor was Bob Dole. Let's not forget that Bush I called supply-side economics "voodoo economics" and Dole once joked that a bus full of supply-side economists fell off a cliff, and it was a tragedy because one lived. John McCain, "the maverick," has made a career out of driving conservatives nuts. Only George W. Bush can plausibly be seen as a real movement conservative. But even Bush II signed into law No Child Left Behind, hugely expanding the federal commitment to education, and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, a large new entitlement. This is why conservatives, outside of Bush's tax cuts, were largely tepid towards his domestic policy (and some, like George Will, William Buckley and the entirety of the American Conservative, disliked his foreign policy as well). Romney is well within the tradition of Bush I, Dole and McCain. He is a pragmatic (even squishy) conservative, certainly no ideologue.

Then there is Romney the plutocrat. This is, oddly, the stranger accusation. If elected, Romney would not be the richest president ever. According to Forbes, Romney would be behind (in order, and controlling for inflation) Washington, Jefferson, and Hoover. As Meatloaf said, two out of three ain't bad. So why the envy towards Romney, whose fortune is well short of Washington's? According to Forbes, if John Kennedy would have lived to inherit his father's wealth, it is likely his wealth would have exceeded that of Romney. And of course John Kerry, who just narrowly missed becoming president, is worth about two and a half times what Romney is worth. There is one difference, though. Romney earned nearly every penny he has (you might recall that he gave the entirety of his inheritence from his father to Brigham  Young University). John Kerry inherited or married into almost all of his wealth. Obviously Romney is very wealthy, but the focus on his wealth seems oddly out of proportion. His crime appears to be that he is a Republican who made his money, not a Democrat who inherited it, as did Kerry and the Kennedys.

Also, by almost all accounts, Mitt Romney is an uncommonly decent man. I am not just talking about that fact that he gave about 4x as a high a percentage of his income to charity last year as did Barack Obama. Let's be honest, even though he is going way beyond tithing, he can afford it. But look at all the accounts of his life. He did take the time to go on Mormon mission. The reviews of his time as a Mormon bishop are largely (but not universally) positive. Just look here and here. These news stories depict various examples of a decency and warmness to his fellow man that are striking. How about two examples:

Ted Oparowski, a retired firefighter, and his wife, Pat, a secretary, still praise Mr. Romney for ministering to their 14-year-old son, David, who was dying of cancer three decades ago.       

The boy, upon hearing that Mr. Romney was a lawyer, asked him to help draft a will, so that he might leave something to each of his friends. Mr. Romney pulled out a legal pad, and together they wrote one up. Later, he gave the eulogy at the boy’s funeral....

When Clayton Christensen, a Harvard business professor, and his wife, Christine, felt overwhelmed by church obligations, Mr. Romney showed up unexpectedly at the door. With three young children, Mr. Christensen was in charge of missionary work; his wife ran the relief society, ministering to Boston’s poor.       

“He said, ‘I was just driving home from work, and I had a feeling that I needed to stop by and tell you that God loves you.’ ” Mr. Christensen was so moved, he recalled, that he wept.

This does not count the well told story of Romney personally overseeing the search for the daughter of a Bain Capital employee who had gone missing in New  York. Imagine Mitt Romney going to rave parties showing the young woman's picture. Because that's what Romney did and it worked. And by now many know that Romney and one of his sons literally saved a family from drowning.

 Compare this with Barack Obama.  According to Game Change co-author John Heilemann, "I don’t think [Obama] doesn’t like people. I know he doesn’t like people."  Or take Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker, quoting a Democrat "in the know":

The truth, he added, “is that Obama doesn’t really like very many people.” He  ticked off the names of some of Obama’s longtime friends: the Whitakers, the  Nesbitts, Valerie Jarrett. “And he likes to talk about sports. But other than  that he just doesn’t like very many people.”

I heard a podcast some time ago with the New York Times' David Brooks, an Obama supporter in 2008.  Brooks, who has met Obama many times, says that Obama is the most self-confident man he has ever met and takes it personally if anyone disagrees with him.  And of course Obama famously said:

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Granted, anyone who is president is going to have an ego.  But Obama seems to have an almost pathologically inflated sense of his own awesomeness.  This is a problem because, if I may quote Dirty Harry (not an Obama supporter), "A man's got to know his limitations." As the New York Times reports, "But even those loyal to Mr. Obama say that his quest for excellence can bleed into cockiness and that he tends to overestimate his capabilities." And one can barely imagine Obama engaging in acts of personal warmness and kindness that appear to have defined Mitt Romney's life. 

Of course, if you prefer Mr. Obama's politics, none of this matters.  Likewise with Mr. Romney.  As George Will recently stated, we are chosing a president, not a buddy. But perhaps it is time to rethink our myths of Romney the Cold Fish and Obama the Healer of All Wounds.

Comments

[Stan Gibilisco]

Sorry, I can't bring myself to vote for Mitt Romney. I just don't trust him. (I don't trust Obama either, so I'll likely go for Gary Johnson.)

If Romney and Ryan got their way, as I understand it, the corporate income tax would go down or go away; the capital gains tax would go away; the estate tax would go away. The general income tax rates would go down, especially in the high brackets.

If no other changes were made, I'd be a little better off after these measures became law. However, there's a catch, and I don't think very many Republicans see it.

Paul Ryan, in my opinion, wants to impose a value-added tax (VAT). His first "Roadmap" in fact included an 8.5 percent "business consumption tax," a rather deceptive term for it, because in fact, it would strike every American as a national sales tax. Ryan backed off of that tax in his second plan, but I suspect, only because too many people saw through it in the first plan.

Mitt Romney refuses to rule out a VAT. In my view, that means he'd sign a tax law change that imposes one, especially if it can be disguised by fancy terminology to make the Republicans think that is's something it isn't.

The VAT in any form is a regressive tax, and would hit the poor the hardest. The middle class, too, would take a pretty big hit. The rich could withstand it, especially in light of the fact that people like Romney, whose income derives mainly from investments, would see their income tax burden drop to near zero.

With the Republicans' historic fondness for regressive taxation, I'll bet that a Republican executive team such as Romney and Ryan could hookwink the House Republicans, even the Tea Party types, into accepting the VAT.

Obama wants a VAT too, as does every dyed-in-the-Rayon liberal Democrat; but if he were to try for that, the House Republicans would attack him and his fellow leftists like wild animals.

Noooooo .... I think that Mitt Romney is a self-serving plutocrat. Obama is a leftist. I don't like either one of 'em. They're both great family men, they both have good morals as far as I can see, and they're both pretty much free of the sleaze we've seen in some of our past Presidents.

But as far as I can tell, the choice between them is one of getting hosed from the left or hosed from the right. For me, it's either stay home or vote Libertarian.

[Christopher London, Esq.]

HOW TO FEEL LIKE A TOTAL SCHMUCK ---> GET ON BOARD WITH MITT -- Give a a campaign donation to a guy with at least $250 Million, probably truly more like a Billion dollars, hidden in secret unmarked off-shore bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands from wealth extracted via creative destruction of America's Industrial Heartland. And then ask yourself, do you feel patriotic or a bit like you are enabling an International Financial Racketeer by donating to a man who put people out of work and seized their pension assets so he and his cronies could have some happy returns? Have you not learned anything from Ken Lay and the Enron Scandal or the Bernie Madoff Scandal or the Financial Collapse of 2008? The clear, convincing and compelling evidence is there before your eyes that a Financial Criminal is the GOP's standard bearer. But go ahead give the Romney Con some money. In the absence of chum, it is kind of like sticking your bloodied arm in the water to attract sharks off the coast of Montauk. But then again, if you are phucking schmuck you will ignore the evidence of who Mitt Romney really is. May I recommend you buy a shirt, some flowers for your girlfriend, get a new iPhone, get a Steak, order some expensive wine, hire a hooker. Anything is better than giving Mitt Romney money my friends. https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150437193417030

[Stan Gibilisco]

Well, Christopher, I'm not sure I'd take it quite that far, but I do like the idea of getting an iPhone and a steak, while we still have the profound luxury of living without a value-added tax.

My take:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv4BWKZ4xlk&feature=plcp

[LK]

Since you quoted David Brooks, allow me to paraphrase him. Romney may be a decent human being. I will grant that he's a better human being than I am, but that doesn't mean he is going to pursue policies that will help the people he personally helps.

One must remember that Romney sounded more sincere when he claimed that 47% of Americans were moochers than he did at any other time in this campaign. If you’re going back to Washington and Jefferson to keep Romney out of the top 3 wealthiest people to hold office, there’s a lot of Presidents in between including the Kennedy and the Bushs

I'm not voting for Obama because of his civil liberties stances, Arne Duncan and the corporatizing of public education, and drone warfare, but the charge that he doesn't like people seem specious. Obama seems a classic introvert, a person tired out by social situations. It isn't that he dislikes people but that social interactions weary him and adopting the "hale fellow well met" persona necessary for political office takes a toll while it energizes extroverts. As someone who stays away from social gatherings because he's much more tired when he leaves than when he arrives, and not in a good way, I can empathize. Susan Cain has a good write up here http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/opinion/sunday/introverts-make-great-leaders-too.html?_r=0

[Donald Pay]

What's great about Obama is that he is awesome and knows he's awesome, and it just shatters the confidence of the Lesser Men, like KB, who try to make that into some sort of deficit. He's so awesome he exhibits his awesomeness with a confident humor that further enrages the Lesser Men.

Obama has taken on the Ali persona, taking on and dispatching a series of fading white has beens. I hope Obama starts predicting Romney's electoral vote defeat with some Ali-like poetry.

Romney's slow
He's gonna go
Down real fast
He won't last
Till 10 and half past
Ohio, Penn
Wisconsin
Bye, bye Mitt
And that's it.
So come on, Joe
We got another fo'

[Lisa]

To those who are enamored with the free mkraet approach to health care access I say why not go all the way then? Let me posit the following scenario: The year is 2010, in response to not very widespread complaints that some people in America might actually be getting something for nothing, Congress springs into action. At the end of a grueling session, and in a remarkable display of bipartisanship, they emerge with the Healthcare Ultimate Responsibility Law (HURL). The legislation rescinds the long existing federal mandate that hospitals provide free care to those in need, and dismantles Medicare. It also abolishes all private health insurance, as some policy holders have been consuming a disproportionate amount of medical care in excess of what their premiums would have covered. Prior to leaving for his weekly salon session / hunting trip, President Britt Momley signs the bill into law, pronouncing it “…the final solution to the free rider problem…” Vice President Johann Moneygrubber and Secretary of Wealth and Inhumane Disservices Don Clydesdale look on in awe. Finally, free mkraet forces will determine the delivery of health services. Anyone wishing to see a doctor will be required to have cash on the barrelhead. Everyone’s net worth can be immediately ascertained by reading the RFID chip embedded at the base of their necks. Fools desperate enough to show up on the steps of medical institutions seeking care with no means to pay are strapped to gurneys in five point restraints and promptly, but cheaply, euthanized. Since these freeloaders would obviously have no means to pay for burial services, their useful tissues and organs are harvested to provide spare parts for the paying customers and luminaries like Paris Hilton and former Vice President Dick Cheney. The remainder of the body is burned on the premises to provide heat for the hot tubs on the liposuction unit. Many panicked Americans seeking treatment flee to the Canadian and Mexican borders only to be turned back by immigration authorities. They die in droves, providing the few remaining U.S. medical schools with a steady stream of anatomical specimens. There is not much need for doctors, with such a limited patient pool, the U.S. actually becomes the world’s largest exporter of trained physicians, and the nursing shortage that loomed so large in the early part of the decade has been resolved overnight. Surplus cadavers are collected by companies BFI and Waste Management, Inc, who in true entrepreneurial spirit have expanded their recycling operations to include corpses. No sense in burying the wretches, that’s just a waste of prime real estate! Instead, bodies are trucked off to mass incinerators where they provide the fuel to run industry. At last, a cheap source of renewable energy. Yes, it’s a new day in America, and no one is on the public dole!

[Ghazi]

I have not yet read your book, but I believe Barack has very good, even pgevrossire instincts and heart, plus intelligence. Don't see any way to beat that!