Mitt Romeny’s recent spread in Parade magazine December 4 issue reads a lot like what a robot commercial will look like in the future. As humans, it’s in our very nature to distrust the unknown and the new. Artificial intelligence will also be a check on our egos, and the acknowledgement of our own frailty and mortality. However, since the rise of the machines is at least a few decades off, we do have politicians to bridge the gap in the meantime.
I’ve been having a good hardy chuckle with Parade’s GOP “Meet the Candidates 2012” Presidential Candidate coverage. I loved Perry’s cover, where his jacket front is all open like he’s allowing America to suckle from his Freedom teat. I genuinely enjoyed his answers to tee-ball style questioning. I supremely enjoyed Romney’s, with the pictures of his whole mess of kids and especially the one word blurbs that associates used to describe him that fill the article.
The first one, on the very first page is: “Human”. Rocky Anderson’s blurb then follows that “He’s much funnier than he comes across. But he’s too darn handsome. You feel a bit inadequate around him.” So the blurb should’ve been “Handsome”…maybe it was a typo? Also being described as human doesn’t really explain anything. Aren’t most people “Human”?
The next blurb is much, much better. “Ambitious”, but then the following statement is more a kick in the balls to Romney’s whole article trying to sell, presumably, the moderates and independents who don’t know who to vote for yet: “When he ran for governor he told us he’d be the most effective Republican in the U.S. on choice. But after he was elected, he totally flipped positions”. This totally plays in to the problem Romney’s having with his political inconsistency. But it does nothing to describe “Ambitious”. Was he ambitious in his flip-flopping? Ambitiously able to be a politician and lie to constituents to get much needed Massachusetts liberal votes? It remains to be seen on that on. Not only is Romney inconsistent, so is this very profile on him!
There are a few other blurbs that are essentially boilerplate political bullshit. “High Energy” and “Positive” round out the blurbs and the following statements keep in line with the “One Word” followed by dissassociative sentence. I believe better blurbs could’ve been: “Virile” Romney’s fathered five children, all boys. That is some stallion virility and DNA right there. “Well-Coifed” Mitt Romney’s hair is ALWAYS perfectly in place with nary a wayward strand. Even under intense pressure, the coif stays put. We’ll move forward with the actual article.
It wouldn’t be a Parade interview without the boneheaded interview questions. I’m wondering if David Gergen is actually a real person, or these questions were submitted by a sixth grade English class. Supposedly Americans know Romney’s policy positions. That’s soundly untrue. I’ve been following this clown car GOP rally, and I actually know very little about his policy positions. I’ve seen and read “ideas” that he’s moved to and away from, but nothing substantially concrete. Keyword being substantially, he may surprise me soon. No, we get in to Romney’s father George’s influence on his life. Oh look at this, he was a CEO, but he came from nothing. This is key, especially in the current economic climate we find ourselves in. Romney is worth 250 million dollars, he is not one of us. But all through this article, he’ll be damned if he doesn’t sell the notion that’s he just a guy. Who’s father came from nothing, who somehow sent his son to Harvard. You know, like most of us, who were allowed to go to an Ivy League University for higher education.
Furthering this narrative, Romney’s interview turns to his oddly omitted Mormon mission in the 60’s. It just states he went on a “mission” and that shaped him. Clearly he’s backing away from the whole Mormon thing, because that scares evangelicals in the right wing. Even when asked about how his Mormon faith has affected his life he manages to dodge that and focus on the Ten Commandments, that in his words are “…the basis of Judeo-Christian faiths”. He then goes on to say that religious oppression, my words, are somehow liberating. That being faithful is somehow a well of passion and devotion for marriage, and that tithing makes money less important. The interviewer then surmises that he’s given million of dollars to his church. Since tithes can’t really be accounted for, I’m going to find that REALL, really hard to believe.
The money question then gets in to the very real problem that any GOP, nay, politician is running in to: How do you relate or connect to the person struggling to get by? Romney, ever studious of the political playbook, name drops FDR, Kennedy and his would be analogous figure Eisenhower (of which his grandchildren have been instructed to call him Ike) who served in similar times. He goes on to say that the middle class is struggling, blahblahblah. Problem is, the question was how does Romney, a millionaire, connect to an average American living paycheck to paycheck? He has no answer.
The recent Brett Barier interview spotlighted a major issue with this current crop of candidates: once they wander off the rhetoric/talking point farm they faulter and look stupid. While Romney has yet to do that in any of the myriad of debates, that Fox New’s interview was perilously close to pulling back the curtain to what’s really wrong with Mitt Romney. The fact that he even thinks the interview was too harsh, speaks volumes to how out of touch he is with the general voting public, which is marginally higher than the right-wing on any given day.
This interviews goal was to show people the “real” Mitt Romney. It’s an impossible task, and the interview shows that, and suffers greatly for it. Romney comes across as the political operative robot that he is, well at least this point in the race. Most of the “tough” interview questions are not answered in this article. For instance the interview talks about what he would do with a similar situation of deficit deadlock. Romney goes for a mountain climbing metaphor instead. He tiptoes the Mormon issue and comes across as any other politician would in an interview such as this. He loves him family, his God and his country. I know that you can’t spread that out over five pages but this doesn’t even begin to show the “real” Mitt Romney.
The bulk of this interview comes across as pandering to the Republican establishment and the TEA Party. Romney’s strategy of being whatever the right-wing wants at any given time isn’t working because he’s coming across as the very antithesis of what the right-wing is rejecting. It’s no mistake that the GOP Presidential front-runners at any given time got there more for being candid and less button up same old’ white guy that they’ve been foisting on the general election for the past umpteen decades. It’s the reason why, if Romney gets the nomination he will lose to Obama. Hell, most of the Democrat establishment bucked a Clinton for Obama in 2008, the waves of popular political change are strong. Most of the voting electorate have clearly established that they are done voting for the same old same old. Romney’s even keel approach is fine, if he enjoys the marginal poll numbers he’s been receiving, but he’s costing himself an election in doing so.
No comments:
Post a Comment