It’s kind of fun watching Mitt Romney run for President. He has this refreshing tendency to shot first and react to questions later.
In shoot first I’m referring to a unique quality of speaking without thinking through the ramifications of what he’s uttered. I really can’t remember someone with such a ham-handed mastery of language since perhaps
Dan Quayle
Throughout his time as vice president, Quayle was widely ridiculed in the media and by many in the general public, in both the U.S. and overseas, as an intellectual lightweight and generally incompetent. Contributing greatly to the perception of Quayle’s incompetence was his tendency to make public statements that were either self-contradictory and confused (“The holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history.… No, not our nation’s, but in World War II. I mean, we all lived in this century. I didn’t live in this century, but in this century’s history”), impossible and confused (“I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future”) or confused, as when he addressed the United Negro College Fund, whose slogan is ‘A mind is a terrible thing to waste,’ and said, “You take the UNCF model that what a waste it is to lose one’s mind or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.”
or maybe even Norm Crosby.
Norm Crosby (born September 15, 1927) is an American comedian sometimes associated with the Borscht Belt who often appeared on television in the 1970s. He is known for his use of malapropisms and is often called The Master of Malaprop. He was born in Boston.
In just the last few weeks alone Mitt Romney managed to upset the Arab world, the British but his coupe de grace would have to be his recent comments about how almost half of America is suckling at the government teat.
In the meantime while we have commentators on the right such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannitty trying to paint the current head of the executive branch of government as a Socialist because he dares to say that everyone should pay their fair share when it comes to taxes...
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So, I started writing this some time back. It says 12/8/12 but it’s likely I wrote this before the election and revisited it trying to get it out of the drafts queue after.
We are on the cusp of another election cycle and it seems all too familiar. Same, same. The same hackneyed language about what is bad and what is good. The same shit shoveled onto the American electorate in a desperate attempt to get them to buy a bill of goods that more likely will do them harm.
Now, that’s the cynic in me.
We are lucky in this country, lucky in ways people often don’t recognize. It is because for all the faults we have as a nation, we more often than not get it right.
Not that it isn’t a painful process, not that it doesn’t happen without some bumps and bruises along the way, not that it doesn’t happen in fits and starts but it does happen and we are still here.
And we can be stupid (and often are) and it doesn’t destroy us.
In the rear view mirror some of the things Romney said are almost prescient - especially about Russia. Others though are truly offensive - especially when it comes to embracing some kind of attitude that any social spending is a bad thing.
In some ways though, it is too bad Romney has been discarded by the members of his own party because he might in fact be a much more palatable option to moderates in the Republican party than the current roster of candidates.
What we have before us in this election year is emblematic of what is wrong with our political system and what needs to be fixed. We have POLAR opposites, extremes and our nation is really a nation at the middle.
Even though I seem to have gotten off track here... I know before this is over, this election year, we will see many more instances of a candidate shooting first (with his or her mouth) without thinking - maybe it means there should be a different type of gun control.
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