COMMENTARY
 by Martin Bashir |
He came, he saw, he imploded.
And now Mitt Romney has left London quicker than Tyson Gay or Usain Bolt will explode out of their blocks in the 100 meters.
But although the Republican Party's presumptive nominee spent just a few short hours in the United Kingdom's capital city, he may well come to rue the day that he decided to accompany his wife Ann, and her horse, on their trip to the Olympics. Because while his campaign in the United States is embellished, defended and refined by the support of right wing media, billionaire backers and relentlessly negative attacks on the President, in London it was just Mitt— pure and simple. And it was calamitous.
Plenty of commentators have remarked upon Mr Romney being tone deaf when it comes to the circumstances of ordinary Americans. But he appears to be blind, too.
It was during an interview with my colleague Brian Williams that Mr Romney chose to adopt the traditionally British approach of cynicism and pessimism toward the London Olympic Games. Yet he did so at the very moment when British politicians and Olympic organizers were seeking to dress themselves in American optimism. But poor Mr Romney just couldn't see it.
In discussing the prospects for a successful Olympic Games in London, he told Brian Williams that "It's hard to know just how well it will turn out", and referred to problems with security staffing and the threat of potential public sector strikes. He sounded British at the very moment when the British wanted to sound like Americans: upbeat, enthusiastic and determined to succeed.
And in case you're tempted to think that this was of little importance, you should keep in mind that the politicians who reacted immediately and angrily are normally the Republican Party's closest British friends. Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson are both lifelong members of the Conservative Party. Mr. Cameron has actually enacted the very policies that Mr Romney espouses. He has gutted the public sector, brutally cut back on social welfare programs and the result is a double dip recession and a 0.7% decline in output over the last three months.
Yet such was their anger at Mr. Romney's cynicism that the Prime Minister ignored their shared political philosophy and offered a withering riposte, suggesting that Mr. Romney's stewardship of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics was "in the middle of nowhere". Boris Johnson, meanwhile, mocked him as some bloke out of nowhere. "I hear there's a guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know whether we're ready?" he told a crowd of 60.000 in Hyde Park, offering neither the prefix of 'Governor' nor even 'Republican Presidential nominee.' Mr Romney was chastised by two of the most senior Conservative politicians in Britain.
In trying to understand Mr. Romney's disastrous day in London, it's tempting to believe that this was just the latest example of him pandering to an audience. Having arrived in the UK, he may have calculated that the best way to get along with the Brits was to assume the British affect of pessimism. Just as he couldn't stop talking about "cheesy grits" as he campaigned through Mississippi earlier this year, so he decided to ape the perceived persona of those he was meeting.
But it's actually a much deeper problem than mere pandering.
Mr. Romney keeps crashing into the present because he's running away from his past. And he runs at such speed because he regards his personal biography as a towering inferno. A fire that will burn his political ambitions to the ground.
Just consider how he treats his own past. As his tenure as Governor of Massachusetts drew to a close, he along with others paid thousands of dollars to purchase the hard drives of computers so that none of their correspondence or activities would ever be accessible for posterity. His record as Governor, in economic terms, was unproductive and unimpressive and his only significant achievement is the one thing that he cannot talk about: the reform of health care in the State that became the prototype for the President's Affordable Care Act. So he doesn't talk about Massachusetts.
He can't say too much about his leadership of the Salt Lake Winter Olympics because he relied heavily upon federal support, did not oversee a stellar games and the entire process was beset by allegations of corruption with at least eight I.O.C members apparently offered land, jobs for relatives, even cash for their support. No charges were brought. But it means he can say little about the Olympics.
He had thought that he could build his entire political appeal on his experience in private equity but this has been saturated in charges of outsourcing jobs and off-shoring his income. So Bain is now a chronic pain.
He can't even talk about his personal faith because Mormonism is at variance with orthodox Christianity and this week a number of Christians protested against his visit to London. One protester held a large banner that read: 'Mitt Romney says Jesus is the devil's brother. Christianity says Jesus is the Lord of Glory.' He really does not want to engage in theological discussions about the baptism of the deceased or whether Mormonism contains a virulent strain of racism, which precluded blacks from holding office within the organization for more than a century. Again, he is silent on the fundamental principles that have determined his life.
And this is why Mitt Romney has been described by Britain's national press as a blundering fool. This is why he arrived in London and immediately insulted the British Olympic Committee and the British government's handling of the Games. It is because he cannot talk about himself and he lacks the insight required to talk about others. His brief visit became the reverse of Dale Carnegie's most famous work, a revised version by Mr Romney: 'How to Lose Friends and Influence Nobody'.
In many ways, he's reminiscent of the great imposters of history. He has no past that he speaks of—only the ambitions he has for the future. But that's hardly surprising. Because when an individual is at war with his own biography, what is there left for him to discuss?
Leave a Comment:
"How to lose friends and influence nobody"..the real Mitt
I am actually starting to feel sorry for Mitt. I think he is not on a path he really would have chosen for himself and is living out someone else's script for his life. That may be why he "feels" inauthentic--he is not living out of his own lifemap.
Do not feel sorry for him, please. He does not feel his inauthenticity. He would not know what you were talking about.
(Insight from one who lives in Utah.)
I believe that Mitt is running for the presidency because he has been told to do so by the bishops in the Mormon Church. They have been trying to get a Mormon in the WH for years.
Well said Martin!
I don't begrudge Romney's individual comments, after all, his expressed views are common among some British. Where Mitt fails is in his timing and the cumulative total of rather unaware expressed thoughts. I recognize that our political system encourages those with exceptionally high egos to run for political office, but, maybe it is too far for a person, who has only a sense of self awareness, and little reflectiveness of his surronding environment, to be successful, as a presidential candidate. If one can not even successfully pretend to have empathy, one should stay home and stay quiet.
Otherwise, Martin provides such complete clarity in his commentary, that all the reader can say is "well done, Martin, superbly stated".
Mitt continues to put his foot in his own mouth. Poor Mitt!
Mitt's foreign policy? Farther right wing than Bush in his advisors; and unable to connect even with a conservative foreign government that speaks his own language: See ThinkProgress for an account of how the UK government minister says, "Our heart is with Obama" even though Mitt could be a fine "CEO president"...
Mitt is trying to "one up" his dad...who ran for but never became President.
A form of Penis Envy....
My career was bigger than your career
Wait til Mitt gets to Israel...with Sheldon Adelson
Mitt's inability to think on this feet, and the mindset his gaffes expose, demonstrate that he is not presidential material.
I love Mr. Bashir's commentary. He's always on point with the FACTS!!! What perplexes me is...HOW CAN MITTENS WANT TO BE THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF when he protested for the WAR-IN-VIETNAM, but was too afraid to show his PATRIOTISM and finagled his way out of serving 4x's. Then, in 2008, when he was running for the presidency, A reporter asked MITTENS if his sons were going to be patriotic and go to fight in IRAQ or AFGHANISTAN and MITTENS DECLARED "MY SONS ARE BEING PATRIOTIC. THEY'RE HELPING ME RUN FOR PRESIDENT." HOW ARROGANT! HOW NON-PATRIOTIC! HE JUST SHOWS THAT IT IS OK FOR OUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS TO GO TO WAR AND BE SUBJECTED TO DEATH OR LIFE TIME INJURIES, BUT NOT HIS BOYS!! BULL---T!! ON THE ONE HAND, HE IS KNOWN FOR PLAYING PRACTICAL JOKES AND BEING A BULLY. ON THE OTHER HAND, WHEN IT COMES TO THE REAL DEAL (WAR) ALL OF ROMNEY'S ARE A BUNCH OF SISSY ASS COWARDS!!!! YES, I'VE LOSS FAMILY & FRIENDS IN THE WAR!!!!!
Mitt Romney should have served in Vietnam or done sometime on active duty. Then he should have quietly encouraged his sons to do the same. Most of us can get through military service without banged up in combat, although we have had 50,000 casualties lately in our recent wars. The larger point here is that I am not better than anyone else for doing 20 years on active duty but I am a better person for it. Romney misses the key point from the Roman Republic of a citizen soldier leaving his farm to serve during a military crisis and then quietly returning to his family and farm afterwards. You learn that having an elevator for your cars at your multi-million dollar house is irrelevant towards living a decent life. A good soldier learns to be happy with 6 hours of sleep, a good cup of coffee at breakfast, a warm jacket to keep out the rain on a cold morning, and a group of friends to help him with the long list of duties that must be done that day. You learn that owning extra stuff means you have to carry it through an airport along with your other 200 lbs of gear so you settle for a newspaper or paperback book instead of something heavy or bulky when waiting between trains or planes.
Every civilian before pursuing their business career needs to have three for four years of public service in the military, or as a social worker, as a policeman or fireman, or as a public school teacher or perhaps as a city worker. Mitt Romney never had to deploy to a foreign country for a war. This experience may have made Mitt Romney a real man who has empathy towards other human beings. In fact this empathy towards others transcends all things you do. Military service makes you value the public sector a whole lot more. Education, health care, infrastructure, and physical fitness become core values of importance to you after three or four years of active duty. This may not be true for all veterans but in most cases I believe that it would be.
Now we get back to Mitt Romney. The reason Mitt Romney comes off as such a fraud is that he never seems to be able to instinctively know what is important and what is not. Rich people who live extravagantly are behaving stupidly and irrelevantly in terms of what they actually need. These rich people become completely detached from the realities facing the blue collar man with a son in the Army, a bunch of bills and a W-2 on the kitchen table, a daughter who is off to college and a wife with expensive cancer screening that the insurance company does not want to pay.
We need to be married to a decent spouse. We need to take care of our family. We need to have food, clothing, shelter, and a way to get to work. We should stick a little money away for retirement and pay off the house mortgage for adequate shelter. We don't need two Cadillac Escalades or a horse at the Olympics or an elevator in our house for our cars. Military service would have taught Mitt Romney that health care, education, infrastructure, energy conservation, and living simply at all times like a Roman citizen soldier returning to his farm is the way a man should behave at all times. Empathy towards other humans comes from sharing their circumstances for a period of time in your life. If Mitt Romney had to carry an M-16 with 80 lbs in a pack out on patrol in Vietnam, he might have actually learned the empathy towards others that he so desperately needs instead of being the stuck up snob that he is.
There is nothing left for me to say. Like minded people seek their own level. I love all of you and Martin is great!!