Friday, September 28, 2012; 9:02:51 AM Eastern
Romney as human being
- I was shocked to hear the beginning of Romney's talk at the Clinton Global Initiative. Why?
- 1. He cracked a joke.
- 2. It was good.
- 3. It was self-deprecating.
- 4. It got the people on his side.
- You gotta wonder why he doesn't show this side of himself when he's not talking to world leaders and fellow rich folk. Like during a debate. Or on the campaign trail.
- But it makes his birther "joke" all the more certain to have not been innocent. Here's a guy who isn't tone-deaf to humor. He knows that a good joke has to be self-deprecating or relatively neutral or else it's flat. A good joke tells the truth in a roundabout or surprising way. Furthering an unfair racist insult against an opponent isn't funny. And it's not a sign of him being tone-deaf to humor -- it is however a sign of him having no moral compass. No place he won't go to win. He should have known that people aren't actually that stupid, we get it, even if we aren't in his social or economic class.
- I read in Politico that he has plans to do bi-partisan deals in his first 200 days to ease gridlock in Washington and gain the confidence of capital markets. A Republican president has that power, where a Democratic president does not. I'm sure he'd face a rebellion in his own party, but they'd have to get in line. So the question is, if this is his plan, why isn't he telling anyone?
- Maybe Romney, in a desperate last Hail Mary pass, could come clean, dump his own party, throw them under the bus, apologize, and tell the voters what he really plans to do. It's conceivable that might make the race competitive. Not likely, but not impossible. It would be good for the country, regardless.
- If Romney has a human side, doing something good for the country, even if it might not be good for his candidacy or his party, might not be completely unthinkable.