(Walt Handelsman via GoComics.com)
__
Michael Tomasky, in the New York Review of Books, has a nice compact summary of the life of Willard Mitt Romney so far:
George Wilcken Romney, the former automobile executive who became the centrist Republican governor of Michigan in 1963, was considered a presidential possibility leading up to the 1964 election. Moderate Republicans around the country were getting awfully nervous about this Goldwater fellow and seeking out plausible alternatives. But Romney, a tall and square-jawed man with impressive hair, had made a commitment to the voters of his state that he would serve four years, and Romney was a man who meant what he said, so a 1964 run was out of the question. The task of opposing Barry Goldwater fell to other moderates—Nelson Rockefeller and Pennsylvania’s William Scranton. Romney did, however, leave his mark on the campaign: having deemed Goldwater an enemy of civil rights, which he backed ardently, he walked out of the party’s convention at San Francisco’s Cow Palace. He had his seventeen-year-old youngest son, Mitt, in tow, and thus Mitt, too, occasionally gets credit (at www .aboutmittromney.com, for starters) for stalking away from his party on a matter of the highest principle.
__
Today, as the younger Romney struggles to secure the GOP nomination that seemed his for the taking until his crushing loss to Newt Gingrich in South Carolina, to think about that anecdote and his father’s towering influence on him, to read these two balanced but essentially unflattering books, and to watch Willard Mitt Romney run a campaign in which he has charged as hard and fast to the right as he could on almost every issue you can think of lead inevitably to comparisons between the two Romneys, comparisons in which the younger Romney comes up dramatically short…
Ruckus
comparisons in which the younger Romney comes up dramatically short…
So dramatically short that we need to invent new sayings.
Apple of his fathers eye. Becomes Turd of his fathers…
Can’t hold a candle. Becomes Can’t even figure how to strike a match…
Chip off the old block. Becomes Stain in the old mans shorts…
John Weiss
Fuck Mittens. Sorry. I can’t think of any other opinion.
gex
Someone had to have raised him such that the only way he can fill the hole in his soul is to amass as much gold as the kingdom holds and to oppress the serfs as he condescends to tell us how much Jeebus values our suffering and meekness.
I’ll give Papa Romney 50% responsibility for that.
Arclite
Looks like Obama will take Superpac money too.
I suppose it was inevitable, and I can’t really blame Obama for tapping this source of funding. Hopefully it comes from high population groups like unions and not from wealthy individuals like the Kocks.
Linda Featheringill
@gex:
Yes, you wonder how to raise a [presumably healthy] child to produce such an adult.
If he were poor, the world would blame a dysfunctional family and poor parenting, but as the Romneys are rich the world doesn’t blame them hardly at all.
capt
The only thing Willard is good at is being rich. That’s not enough for anybody.
RedKitten
How times have changed. Goldwater, by today’s Republican standards, would now be considered a RINO, if not a complete leftist…
WereBear
@Linda Featheringill: Another Republican with Daddy issues. But in this case, he’s not even trying to measure up.
There’s a great Donald E. Westlake line that covers this: Since he had been born rich, he’d never learned to control his emotions.
To me, that “clueless dick boss” vibe that Romney exudes like gone-over Old Spice is what will really doom him. That’s your unfavorables talking.
Schlemizel
@WereBear:
I love Westlakes “Dortmunder” series a lot & some of his ‘straight’ crime novels like “The Ax” are very good too. Where did he write that line?
Poor Willard, he will have to comfort himself with more money since he will never be as good as his old man.
geg6
@Arclite:
Since when is that news? Anyone with a brain knew he has his own PACs. And you expected him to go into a gunfight with a pillow or something?
Jeebus.
amk
That younger romney had sold out himself to wallstreet cash cow long time back.
WereBear
@Schlemizel: The Ax is an incredible work!
The line is from the Dortmunder entry where they are planning to steal a rich man’s car collection, The Road to Ruin.
How you feeling lately? It’s a funny thing; when I’m sick, I can’t concentrate, and have to reread favorite books.
Betty Cracker
I read a piece awhile back (in Rolling Stone, I think) about how Romney senior lost the GOP nomination for daring to tell the truth about Vietnam, which was what he was doing with the “brainwashed” comment, and the profound effect that had on young Willard. The piece suggested that the lesson Willard took from the incident is that telling the truth is for losers and that you have to lie and give the rubes what they want to win. Sounds about right.
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: I think I read the same piece; so a rebellious teen decided his dad had screwed up and HE wasn’t going to stick to principle ever ever ever.
I’m firmly in the camp that says this is what inherited wealth leads to: without any pressures to actually grow up, people just don’t.
Schlemizel
@WereBear:
The Ax is about the laid off guy who creates an open for himself 8-{D and has a very unusal ending for a crime novel, the Hook is about two authors one famous & the other unknown who come to a bad end . two of my favs by him. Why Me? Whats The Worst That Can Happen (which is the only half-way decent movie from his stuff) and the one where they try to help the guy who is always the sucker The Mark(?).
I go to get the surgical catheter out today & find out what is next. The draining triggered gout so I am in a lot of pain – that shit is no joke. I have been deeply depressed & when that happens I can’t read well at all. I just struggled though Steve Martins The Pleasure Of My Company (which was pretty entertaining & very short). Thought I would tackle What This Cruel War Is Over but it ain’t happening.
WereBear
@Schlemizel: Aw, crap; gout is a killer.
When I’m up against something like that, I reach for the good drugs and the DVD collection of Britcoms.
Hope you find something that works well for you.
Betty Cracker
@Schlemizel: No joke is right. My husband has occasional gout flare-ups (rare in his case, thankfully), and it can be incapacitating. My sympathies.
gelfling545
@gex: I would suggest that, knowing he was not of the moral fiber his father was, he decided to go the other way. Few parents should get as much credit or as much blame as you assign for the adult activities of their offspring. Most people who have their first child are amazed that, contrary to what they may have believed, children come into the world as with marked individuality and can be modified but not transformed, except by extremes of behavior.
Matt
I guess I’m the only one who has black sheep relatives. Some people just turn out differently from their siblings, parents, etc. Everything I hear about Mitt’s father makes him sound like an admirable human being. Raising a son who is by all accounts a good father and husband but who is nevertheless clearly unfit for the most important job in the world doesn’t take that away.
Raven
@Matt: We are the people our parents warned us about.
magurakurin
@geg6: Yeah really. To paraphrase Wyatt Cenac of the Daily Show, “Let’s do this. We have money, too.”
Shawn in ShowMe
@Matt:
By all accounts there are crime bosses who raised sons who were good fathers and husbands. It’s the family business that we object to. Debating whether George W Bush or Dubya is more respectable is besides the point.
Keith G
I imagine that Mitt has no remorse when he reflects on dad. His type of business person cannot afford to have deep moral feelings that conflict with his central goals.
Schlemizel
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Always reminds me of my favorite line from the original Batman movie:
“Its true what they say about Boss Grissom, he was a murderer and a fiend, on the other hand he had a lovely singing voice.”
Matt
Shawn, I don’t think I understand what you’re saying. Nevertheless, I’ll try to make a comparison. Knowing only the public record, the elder Romney seems a much more impressive man than either Bush I, Bush II, or his son. I choose not to hold the fact that his son lies somewhere between the two Bushes on the same scale against him. Because of what I said before.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Matt:
As is your right. And I choose to hold George Romney’s lifelong shilling for Republicans against him. That party is a cesspool. You can’t befriend bigots and capitalist leeches and then be surpised when your son views your moderation as a sign of weakness.
rikryah
Willard has no principles.
handsmile
Another passage from the Michael Tomasky essay, describing Mittens’ response to his father’s failed presidential campaign and the “brainwashed” remark.
Tomasky’s review is a summary of two recent books, The Real Romney by two Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, and Mitt Romney: An Inside Look at the Man and his Politics by R.B. Scott, a journalist who is a fellow Mormon and former Romney adviser.
Jose Padilla
Don’t mean to make this a Donald Westlake thread (he deserves on all to himself) but his best books were the Parker series, which took the American fetish for efficiency to its logical conclusion.
Cacti
The thought of another “MBA President” with Daddy issues sends a shiver up my spine.
Paul in KY
For a Mormon plutocrat, George wasn’t that bad a dude.
Too bad his son is such a wanker.
REN
@RedKitten:
Boy , you hit that one on the head. Goldwater wanted to nuke every communist on earth, nut he wasn’t anywhere near as socially conservative as Republicans today.
Chris
@Jose Padilla:
Just to pile onto the Westlake stuff: I’d never heard of the guy, so I wikipediad him and the only thing I was familiar with was this:
“Westlake also wrote a treatment for the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, which was adapted later by several screenwriters. How much of Westlake’s story ended up in the screenplay is unknown; he does not receive either a story or screenplay credit for the finished film, suggesting that little if any of his original work was used .[9]”
If that “treatment” was the original script of “Tomorrow Never Dies,” then I’ve read it and thought it was much better than the finished product. Will look for his books at the public libraries to see what his more well known writing’s like.