The Enigma of Willard Mitt Romney

The closer we get to the Nov. 6 presidential election the more Willard Mitt Romney reminds me of two quotes. The first was addressed to Mulder in the X-Files. The second is attributed to Winston Churchill and was used in a different variation by Mulder in an episode of the X-Files:

“And a lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths.”

And:

“It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

Both quotes reflect Romney, his campaign, the Republican Party, and the Tea Party. And each may explain why Romney seems to be losing grounds in polls of the critical swing states that are expected to decide this election.

A look at the entire campaign season lends support to that assertion. Ever since the Republican presidential primary Romney has at various times shown that he is out of touch with most Americans. From his comments about the number of Cadillacs his wife owns, to their dressage horse, to his push for tax breaks for the wealthy, to his friendships with NASCAR owners, Romney has shown that he is insensitive to the plight to those unlike himself. Add to that the distortions that he has spread about President Barack Obama’s policies and views, and one sees that Romney is not only insensitive to most Americans, but he is also averse to the facts.

If he is asked how he will dramatically cut taxes with a revenue neutral plan, he defers, saying just trust me. If he is asked how he will create the 12 million jobs he has promised, he defers, saying just trust me. In question after question, Romney slithers away, clamoring for the electorate to just trust him. Then, out of nowhere comes an unguarded moment filed with truth that is sandwiched between lies.

Most recently, it was in his disdain for the so-called 47 percent of Americans who do not pay taxes, who are dependent on the government for handouts, and are, therefore, beholding to Obama. That many of those people are military veterans, the elderly, students, working poor, the unemployed, did not register with Romney, who seems to view so many as the unwashed masses unable to take responsibility for their own lives.

Of course, sensing that his comments have hurt him, Romney began proclaiming his love for the masses, all Americans, the 100 percent. Even as he did he continued to flub other moments with outbreaks of candor.

As evidence of his empathy for the 47 percent he proclaimed all the good his health care reform produced in Massachusetts. According to Romney, as well as several nonpartisan studies, the number of people, particularly children, with medical insurance in Massachusetts increased dramatically after Romneycare was passed.

Yet, even as he highlights such an accomplishment he rails against Obamacare, declaring to kill it on Day One of a Romney presidency the national law based on what is surely his own most worthwhile acheivement. Even more, he proclaims that one reason that Obamacare is not needed is because the uninsured can always receive care in the nation’s emergency rooms, one of the most costly aspects of the health care industry that both Obamacare and Romneycare seek to eliminate.

There are even more examples in this campaign season. And as we get closer and closer to Nov. 6 there will probably be even more from Willard Mitt Romney, the “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

When Truth is Worse Than Lies

If one looks at former Gov. Mitt Romney’s – and by extension the Republican Party’s – push for the presidency this year, one sees that Romney has decided that no lie will go untold. Time and time again, Romney, his vice presidential candidate, Paul Ryan, and the campaigns sycophants have told lie after lie after lie about President Barack Obama and his policies in an effort to scare Americans into voting the GOP ticket.

What is really scary though is not the lies that the GOP tells. It is the truths that emanate from Romney. For in those truths lie the most horrific of ideas, the most stunning displays of selfishness, the most neurotic self-aggrandizement in a presidential candidate in some time.

If one did not see this before, then Romney’s comments in the last several weeks, and the release of the video from a May fundraiser in Boca Raton, FL., should provide evidence of how out of touch Romney and the Republicans are with Americans and what it means to be an American. Romney's knee-jerk response to the violence in the Middle East last week demonstrates the chest-thumping, sabre rattling that he and the conservatives seek to pass off as foreign policy. His speech in Florida lays out the plutocratic philosophy of the GOP. No longer is there the lip service to compassionate conservatism. No longer is there a pretense of creating a society where all have a chance to flourish. No longer is there a desire to reach out to others – if only in rhetoric.

Romney and the GOP have decided that the world is made up of makers and takers. The GOP is the party of the makers. The takers are all Democrats, a bunch of left-leaning, Socialist moochers trying to redistribute the gains of the wealthy. So let us now return to the Gilded Age, when the rich bought seats in the U.S. Senate from state legislators. Let us return to that time when the wealthy could live without guilt as they walked by the poor and desolate, ignoring their plight. Let us return to that time when one of the richest men in the world was seen as loving and charitable because he gave a poor child a nickel in a photo op outside a church.

We, the makers, are the worthy, the Republicans shout. We, the makers, are the job creators, they rail. We, the makers, shall allow the hoi polli to bask in our greatness, they declare.

Meanwhile, they strike at all that America should be, a country of shared sacrifice.

According to Mitt Romney's Florida comments, the takers are the 47 percent of Americans who pay no federal income tax. They sit on their oversized duffs, demanding more food, more welfare, more housing, more health care, more of everything from the glorious makers. The takers, Romney and the GOP rants, have no desire to work and they are totally dependent on government handouts.

Not the makers though. No, they built everything they have from the ground up, forsaking government assistance, thriving in a free market economy on their hard work and wits.

Of course we know better. In one of its most recent campaign ads propagating the "You didn't build that" taunt the GOP has been throwing at Obama, the owner of a small-business in Wisconsin talks about making it alone, without government assistance. The owner does not mention that the business received more than $300,000 in government contracts in the Obama years alone. Another of Romney's makers boasted about how he had built his business from scratch, while at the same time complaining that under Obama he has not received enough government contracts.

Yet, that is not the most repugnant stench that rises from the Romney camp. No, that stench comes from the trash heap onto which Romney has placed 47 percent of the American electorate, an electorate he says is beholding to Obama because of a dependency on government, an electorate whose members are unwilling to take personal responsibility or care for their own lives.

It makes you wonder what Mitt Romney's father and mother would think of their little boy. After all, George Romney's first years in America was spent on public relief after Congress created a $100,000 fund to care for the Mormons exiled from their colony in Mexico, according to a recent article on NPR's Web site.

Or at least that is what Romney's mother, Lenore, said in an interview in 1962 when George Romney was running for governor of Michigan, according to NPR. The picture Lenore Romney painted of her husband, a fiscal conservative and social moderate, was a touching one, about a man whose family relied on public assistance, but who was able to rise to become an auto executive and later a governor. And it all started with some government help.

Help that George Romney's son does not want to offer 47 percent of the country, those moochers, those takers, those Obama supporters.

Setting the Stage for the DNC

“It’s time for Democrats to stiffen our backbone and stand up for what we believe.”

That quote from Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts resounded through the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., Tuesday night. The question is will it resound through the nation because now, more than ever, we must decide what type of nation we want to be. Do we want a selfish, vindictive, xenophobic America? Or do we want a generous, forgiving, inclusive America?

For too long Democrats – as well as moderate Republicans – have been willing to acquiesce to the extreme right of the GOP, to hide for fear that acknowledging the Democratic Party’s basic principles will lead to members being labeled big-government, big- spending liberals. It is a label Democrats have been running from for decades.

But Tuesday, Patrick gave voice to what many Democratic voters have been longing for: A strong party that stands by ideas for the common good, the sense of community over the selfishness of the Ayn Rand acolytes.

“We Democrats owe America more than a strong argument for what we are against,” Patrick said. “We need to be just as strong about what we are for.”

The question, Patrick said, is “what do we believe?”

“We believe in an economy that grows opportunity out to the middle class and the marginalized, not just up to the well connected,” he said. “We believe that freedom means keeping government out of our most private affairs, including out of a woman’s decision whether to keep an unwanted pregnancy and everybody’s decision about whom to marry. We believe that we owe the next generation a better country than we found, and that every American has a stake in that. We believe that in times like these we should turn to each other, not on each other. We believe that government has a role to play, not in solving every problem in everybody’s life, but in helping people help themselves to the American dream. That’s what Democrats believe.”

Patrick was not the only one who pushed for Democrats to be Democrats, but he may have been the most vehement.

First Lady Michelle Obama reiterated Patrick’s lament, arguing that President Barack Obama should be re-elected because those ideas are at the heart of what is and should be America.

The president “believes that when you've worked hard, and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity you do not slam it shut behind you,” she said. “You reach back, and you give other folks the same chances that helped you succeed.”

“I know from experience that if I truly want to leave a better world for my daughters, and all our sons and daughters, if we want to give all our children a foundation for their dreams and opportunities worthy of their promise, if we want to give them that sense of limitless possibility – that belief that here in America, there is always something better out there if you're willing to work for it – then we must work like never before,” she continued.

And there lied the heart of what this election – and America – is about. It is one thing to extoll America’s “exceptionalism.” It is another to live up to it. Most recently, we have failed on the latter.

“The days we live in are not easy ones, but we have seen days like this before, and America prevailed,” said Julian Castro, the mayor of San Antonio. “With the wisdom of our founders and the values of our families, America prevailed. With each generation going further than the last, America prevailed. And with the opportunity we build today for a shared prosperity tomorrow, America will prevail.”

Indeed it will if we take the right action.