September 9, 2012

WILL THE REAL MITT ROMNEY PLEASE STAND UP

from London Review of Books (via Book Forum)

Eliot Weinberger is British, and it shows in, what can only be called the arrogant overconfidence with which he concludes his otherwise brilliant sum-up of Mitt Romney, and the Rebooblican party in 2012. Esco brackets his opinions re Weinberger's assumptions when Weinberger states them at the end of the piece. Which brings us to the DISCLAIMER: The photos, and written material in this piece, unless specifically stated otherwise, i.e.[placed in brackets,] are not my own. The bracketed writings are annotations or comments by esco20 inserted to express the opinion of esco20 . No infringement is intended and any media used is not for commercial purposes.





Poor Mitt. He became the Republican candidate for president by default, as the least worst choice from a pack of bizarre characters seemingly drawn from reality TV shows or Thomas Pynchon novels, but he’s not finding much love, even at his own coronation. Only 27 per cent of Americans think that he’s a ‘likeable’ guy. (Obama gets 61 per cent.) On television he projects a strange combination of self-satisfaction and an uneasiness about dealing with others who might doubt his unerring rectitude. The only well-known anecdotes about his bland life of acquiring wealth are both cruel: leading a pack of bullies at his prep school, personally cutting off the long hair of a weeping and pleading gay student, and putting the family dog in a box on the roof of his car for a twelve-hour drive to Canada. (His five sons knew something was wrong when they saw diarrhoea streaming down the back window.) Even Ann Romney, given the task of ‘humanising’ Mitt on the opening night of the Republican convention, couldn’t come up with a single warm or amusing story from their 43 years of marriage. One commentator has compared him to Prince Charles at a welcoming ceremony in New Guinea: he maintains a fixed half-smile, but has no idea what the natives are getting excited about.

Americans value sincerity, above all, in their presidential candidates, regardless of opinions on specific issues. Obama, Bush Jr, Bill Clinton, Reagan all appeared to mean what they say. Failed candidates (Hillary Clinton, McCain, Kerry, Gore, Bush Sr) were all too obviously reversing or avoiding long-held beliefs to pander to the various voting constituencies. But Romney is more than merely insincere. He seems to be a hologram programmed by whatever audience he is addressing at that moment. With an expression as impenetrable as Andy Warhol’s, he is reminiscent of the Warhol who once told an interviewer: ‘Just tell me what to say.’ He is the simulacrum of a candidate: many have noticed his uncanny resemblance to the extraterrestrials in 1950s movies who take on human form.

Republican dogma forces him to rail against the Obama health plan, but sometimes he can’t help but brag about the success of the identical health plan he instituted as governor of Massachusetts. He has subscribed to every possible variation in the medieval theological debate over abortion, and contradicts himself, sometimes on the same day, on economic details. He was at his most Romneyesque when, denouncing gay marriage he said: ‘I agree with 3000 years [sic] of recorded history … Marriage is an institution between a man and a woman.’ He was not only erasing his former support of gay rights, but his own recorded history: his great-great-grandfather had twelve wives and his great-grandfather five, and his father was born in a colony of renegade Mormon polygamists in Mexico.

Romney is so inordinately proud of his enormous wealth, which he mentions at every opportunity, that he apparently assumed it would command unquestioned respect from the masses. He’s been actively running for president for six years, but – even to the amazement of Fox News – it never occurred to him that it might not be terribly appealing to American voters that a potential president hoards his millions in the tax shelters of Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. Or that an election year in the midst of an economic recession might not be the moment to spend $12 million renovating his beach house in California, complete with an elevator for his cars. Or that perhaps his wife should have been encouraged to take up another hobby besides $400,000 dressage horses.

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In the end, the Romney-Ryan ticket is running on a single platform: ‘We’re the white guys.’ White people, in the next few decades, will become a minority in the USA. (2011 was the first year in which the majority of babies born were non-white.) Obama is the most visible sign of this inevitable future and there is no doubt that it is race that has led Republicans to oppose everything Obama supports (even if they supported it the week before). Sixty-four per cent of Republicans still believe that Obama was born in Kenya – Romney likes to joke that no one ever asks him for his birth certificate. Thirty-four per cent of conservatives think Obama is a Muslim. The continual Republican refrain is that ‘Obama doesn’t understand America’ or even ‘Obama hates America.’

....In Tampa, the Republicans managed to put some minority speakers on the stage – most notably Condoleezza Rice – but the crowd in the hall itself was a sea of milk. Nationally, the Republicans are 90 per cent white.
Cover photo


Demographics are shrinking the Republican Party,... Republicans don’t seem to know that the world has changed. The new generations simply don’t object to the social issues – mainly abortion and gay marriage – with which the Party used to rally the troops. Most people, living through last July, the hottest month in recorded history, believe that global warming exists....Above all, in one of the strangest reversals in American politics,...The Republicans have been largely taken over by people who, not very many years ago, were considered the lunatic fringe.

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...nearly everyone agrees the cause is hopeless, [Everyone, perhaps, who doesn't live in America. The polls only give Obama a slight edge, one that can easily disappear in a volatile, economically depressed country. Anything can go wrong. The mainstream media is on the mark by constantly warning its viewers and readers how close the race is, and how easily the lead can change hands.] despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that Romney will spend for television advertising, paid for by a handful of billionaires. The convention in Tampa was notable for the spectacle of the young Alpha-males, vying for dominance in the 2016 elections. But, in the end, it will only be remembered for the sight of a dishevelled Clint Eastwood in an ill-fitting suit, mumbling to an empty chair.