GQ‘s “Desperately Seeking Mitt” is currently being circulated on all the right (by which is meant, of course, left) webtrails. It’s an entertaining piece, with lots of quotable pull-outs. Wells Tower could be the new Dave Barry, which is just fine, because some of us Boomers still miss the political commentary of the original Dave Barry, who was Midwestern in the best way. (Don’t mock. Some people say that President Obama is at his most appealing when he’s being Midwestern in that way — understated, polite, vaguely communitarian, proud of the hard work he’s done to get to his current status but secure enough in his own skin that he understands how much luck went along with that hard work.) So, anyway, Wells Tower “spent five months on the campaign trail in search of the man inside the man who would be president“:
… Thanks to his campaign’s all but unprecedented restrictive vigilance in the media-access department, trying to penetrate the veneer of the Romney brand is like trying to split a billiard ball with a butter knife. Getting anywhere close to him will require you to suffer repeated, soul-depleting exposures to his campaign anthem, Kid Rock’s “Born Free.” You will also endure an uncountable number of citizens reciting this sentence verbatim: “I like his business background, and I think he’s got the best chance of beating Obama.” You will hear people applauding with dire fervor for huge transnational oil-bearing tubes, for voter-identification laws, for Mitt Romney’s plan to defund PBS: “Big Bird is gonna have to get used to cornflakes.” In lieu of actual access, you will be reduced to spending many stageside hours formulating new descriptions of the governor’s hair and speculating on which side he dresses to. (The evidence suggests it’s the left.) You will come to sort of adore Ann Romney and to believe her when she says that when Mitt wondered aloud whether he was the right man for the job, she asked her husband, “Can you save America?”…
After sampling as a mere civilian a half dozen of Romney’s stump speeches—each of them as indistinct and flavorless as a backgammon lozenge—I feel no closer to the man. So I resolve to connive my way into his personal space using media clout. In late February, I secure a spot on Mitt’s press bus in Michigan, setting me back a surprisingly whopping $404.80 for a mere three days of jitneying to campaign events. But given that in primary seasons past a seat on the campaign bus has generally been a surefire route to face time with the candidates, it seems worth the bucks.
Out in front of the Grand Rapids Marriott this morning is parked the big white suppository of a tour bus that will ferry us tonight 140 miles north to a campaign event in Traverse City. The ladies and gents of the press are pre-mustering in the marble lobby. They’re all of them over in the little lounge area, chatting and having a personal-electronics orgy. They seem like inmates of a not very fun sleepaway camp where you endure the same program of activities day in, day out, growing ever more desperate for the teensiest divergence from the standard routine…
Early on I ask a campaign person when I’ll get to talk to the candidate. I’m told that Romney may be taking questions at some point, or possibly he may not. I ask the other media folk, some of whom have been on the bus for months, whether they ever get exclusive, non-pool access to the candidate. The question is met with quizzical laughter…
Closing in on Traverse City, someone says, “It’s one of the fanciest towns in Michigan, if not the fanciest.”
“That’s like saying, it’s the warmest town in Alaska,” someone else quips….
Okaaaay. This is not fair to Michigan, or to Traverse City, you political reporter snobs. During the fifteen years I lived in the state, I came nowhere near visiting every city, but Traverse City would only be fourth or fifth “fanciest” among the ones I did (and I never got to the Grand Hotel, locally referred to as “Mackinaw”). Traverse City — the Spousal Unit grew up there — is a perfectly nice little town, not much more than a century old, whose major industry has always been tourists. It had a brief burst of Midwestern fame during the original Gilded Age, followed by a long slow decline into a working-class, annual-week-in-a-rental-shack summer destination for post-war Rust Belt factory workers, with a strong sideline in offseason deer hunting and ice fishing. Every year there is a week-long Cherry Festival, and a Cherry Queen is crowned, unironically. Traverse City’s closest approach to celebrity is probably Michael Moore, who founded a film festival there.
But the Traverse City portion of his tour seems to be the only place where Towers found a human being, an actual potential voter, who was genuinely enthusiastic about Mitt Romney. South Carolinians are suspicious (“Mitt is as empty as a walnut shell”); Oklahomans were blase (“He’s standing there, and he doesn’t know how he got there, and I thought it was really nice how he wanted to know everybody’s first name. But he was kinda nervous. He’s just a man.”) The press corps, individually and collectively, treats Mitt as a frustratingly deficient product from which media-lineage must be extracted with great toil and little success. Yet in Traverse City, Michigan, there is at least one man who finds Willard “Mitt” Romney inspirational:
Romney claims the mike again. Stump speech ensues. “…Obamacare: We’re getting rid of that… Get America on track… Twenty-five percent… Get that pipeline… Increase purchases of ships, increase our purchases of aircraft, add 100,000 troops of personnel, and finally give our veterans the care they deserve… I love the hymns of America.”
Well, okay, he’s spelled out a few things and delivered the requisite attacks on Obama. Yet the speech still feels like a Frankenstein monster that has yet to be zapped with the lightning bolt. Or so it feels to me. But to the large bald guy behind me, the speech is fully zapped, or more accurately, he’s zapping it for the rest of us, bellowing, “Hey-yo!” “Hear, hear!” and “Waaaaugh!” A kind of walrus roar…
Romney’s speech wraps. By way of introduction, the Exploder snaps a business card into my hand. The card reads “Jim Savage ‘Day Maker’ ” alongside the header “American Bald Eagle” and a painting of an eagle glowering through a diaphanous American flag.
“That’s an American bald eagle,” he clarifies, stabbing the card with a digit. “They call me the Bald Eagle.” So why is the Bald Eagle so keen on Romney? “He’s had the experience to run a business, and the government’s a business, and it’s out of control. I’m a patriot.” …
Bald Eagle made his fortune selling insurance, and by 40, he was retired. He bought six Arabian horses, two of which he hitched to a chariot that led the Michigan State Spartans out of the tunnel before home football games. Otherwise, he spent his riding around on a yacht. “I wouldn’t have had that yacht in Communist China. I’m a patriot,” he says, with earnest vehemence. Before meeting the Bald Eagle, I’d figured that this notion—that the accrual of personal capital is both a valorous and patriotic pursuit—was a feeble way of justifying politicians’ bald advancement of theirs and their campaign donors’ interests, not something people sincerely believed. But I guess I sort of get it now: that America is a wondrous land where no queens or Communists can keep an Aflac man from attaining his maximum of democratic liberty, in this case embodied in a yacht. And even if you haven’t yet got a yacht, who better to put your faith in than a man who could buy a fleet of schooners and not break a sweat?
I thank the Bald Eagle for the conversation. He salutes me and says, “See the people, tell the story. Climb to the top of the pile. God bless.”…
Truly, this man is a jerk. But a jerk perfectly adapted to his very specific time and place, an Eisenhower-Generation or early-Boomer white Christian Midwestern male who prospered because the post-war American government ran an economy designed to reward straight white men who would marry, breed large families, and work to support the economy that supported those families. This jerk may be old enough to have voted for Romney’s father, and he’s certainly old enough to remember Governor George Romney. My educated guess is that he’s living in Traverse City (rather than East Lansing, home of the Michigan State Spartans, which is four hours south of TC) because, starting in the mid-1980s, the boosters who founded the Grand Traverse Resort made a conscious and quite successful effort to court the “snow birds”, well-to-do retired or semi-retired “active” individuals like the Bald Eagle who loved living in Florida but found its summer heat and humidity too enervating for outdoor sports. The “fanciest” parts of Traverse City, the renovated City Opera and the resort spas on the waterfront, cater to people who fly up after Memorial Day and flee after Labor Day, spending the rest of their year in places like The Villages.
Romney is speaking to a certain very specific subset of Americans, those of his generation and of a social class that, while not necessarily as “successful” (rich) as Romney, can aspire to some approximation of the Romney lifestyle (not a multimillion-dollar mansion in La Jolla and another on Lake Winnepasaukee, but at least a townhouse in Orlando and a timeshare in Traverse City). Romney is the Last Best Hope of the Twilight Generation — and while they may be outnumbered by the rest of us, they are fiercely dedicated and organized to hang onto every last scrap of power, honestly or otherwise.
… On some level, [Romney] must know that the world’s more complex than this, and that these past three decades have been very good to people like him and Harold but not so good for everybody else. It’s a big, ugly truth to have to willfully ignore. Not that it’s his fault. Romney’s presidential bid would combust the instant he stopped talking about America as though it is a pretty hologram in a block of cut glass and that its only flaws, easily effaced, are a few thumbprints Obama left on the crystal. Still, it is lamentable that if you ever hope to get elected, your most closely guarded secret is your honest, unairbrushed vision of the nation you want to run…
Frankensteinbeck
Oh, yes. These are exactly who his campaign is geared towards. No one else thinks containing the Soviets is an important issue anymore.
WereBear
Yeah, that Bald Eagle guy. Heck, any affable white man could make a fortune selling insurance with the right attitude!
It puzzles him. Why doesn’t everyone do it?
Alex S.
“For there is a man inside of me. And only when he’s finally out I can walk free of pain.”
Hal
And when exactly did he wonder this aloud? The man has been running for President since at least 2006, and probably pulled a George W and became Governor just to put something other than Bain on his resume, so where talking early 2000’s here.
Not hard to believe Romney has never doubted his destiny was to become president.
Frankensteinbeck
@Alex S.:
I think running as an arrogantly rich asshole who’s deeply committed to a very unpopular fringe version of Christianity would help Romney a great deal. He comes off as a robot denying himself, and people *still see the man inside*.
But he can’t do it. He desperately needs external validation, and he’s having to feel shame for his wealth and his religion for the first time in his life. Not only does he not have the secure self-image to breeze through it and pretend, it infuriates and humiliates him to have what he traditionally bases his pride on treated as negatives.
Omnes Omnibus
@Frankensteinbeck:
In this, you have touched upon the tragedy of our times.
Frankensteinbeck
And if you watch Romney, he really WANTS to tell you how rich he is so you’ll admire him. His habits are built around making sure to mention the other rich people he knows, how good he is at dodging taxes, how many cars his wife drives and where he goes on vacation – while also using those last two to make sure you understand he lives the correct Mormon lifestyle. He desperately needs to brag, and everything he brags about he’s been informed is electoral poison. Worse, he’s just smart enough to recognize that’s true.
MariedeGournay
The Traverse City Film Festival is a blast. Saw Paprika and Taxi to the Darkside there. Also got to sit in a cafe and overhear Michael Moore swap ‘broken car transmission horror stories’ with friends. A nice town.
Todd
If you look at a lot of the Bald Eagle types, they benefitted big from the legacy postwar push for education and infrastructure investments, together with a more stable (and regulated) stock market. Also, remember that heavy manufacturing had been decimated everywhere in the first world except for America, so there was market dominance. And don’t forget the elephant in the room – the absence of career competition from minorities locked out of the economy.
The other fun thing about the Bald Eagle sorts is that those who were in uniform tended to peacetime service, because they were too young for Korea, but too old for Vietnam. They were, however, thoroughly propagandized on the Red Scourge, and see their courageous duty counting mess kits and selling off surplus in the quartermaster’s depot as being equal to living under fire at Chosin or Khe Sanh.
Randy P
I just learned, much to my surprise, that Mitt Romney’s international trip was a great success and the gaffes were meaningless and trivial. And the Palestinian slur wasn’t even a slur but something Arab intellectuals agree with.
Can’t link easily from this device, but all this educational material is in Charles’ Krauthammer’s WaPo column this morning.
RSA
That was a hilarious piece. In some cases Tower is more like a modern Robert Benchley than Dave Barry:
Linda Featheringill
Fun stuff. Good post.
Where does the title come from? I saw it on dkos but don’t know where the original was.
MattF
@Randy P: ‘Reality? Ha ha,’ said Charles.
Has Krauthammer ever actually seen Romney? I’m not going to reprise the classic theory of cognitive dissonance à la Festinger, but if you’re unfamiliar with it, read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails
Nina
The most human Mitt that I’ve seen is an outtake of him talking to Hannity about the relative merits of different types of horses. Mitt was extolling the virtues of warmbloods. He seemed animated and relaxed and not at all robotic.
And completely foreign to everything that I’ve experienced. But there’s a person in there. It’s just that that person is a rich jerk.
Todd
@Randy P:
I’m pretty sure that Krrrrrrauthammergotdammerung is hoovering up Medicare benefits. Can we get some of those death panels started up, and can I preside over the one that makes a decision on his usefulness to society?
Linda Featheringill
Randy P:
I read the Krauthammer piece. Wonder what he’s been smoking? I don’t know whether to pass a law banning that stuff or grab some for myself before I pass it around. Geez!
Don’t think I every met anyone who was influenced by what Krauthammer thought. I guess that makes him harmless.
NotMax
@RandyP
And unicorn steaks are 2 for a dollar at the market.
And it don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.
Krauthammer has needed to recalibrate his political antennae to report something even vaguely recognizable as Earth for a long, long time.
Summer
I remember how funny Dave Barry was in the 80s when I was first out of college, but Wells Tower is way smarter and a better writer. This was a great article.
jwb
I liked this line: ” You will meet a baby wearing a button reading ENJOY CAPITALISM.” Paging Zizek…
arguingwithsignposts
As much as I love Dave Barry, he’s no part midwestern.
Linda Featheringill
Debating Romney will be difficult. He is such a ninny and Obama is so smart. BUT . . . BO should not come across as mean or condescending or anything like that. Wonder if Team Obama is preparing practice sessions. Probably.
Todd
@Linda Featheringill:
Bath salts laced with Walt’s meth, from the looks of it.
jwb
@Linda Featheringill: I haven’t read Krauthammer’s piece and don’t plan to because he’s just so reliably dickish, but supposedly he wrote a fairly scathing column on Romney in London, so maybe this was kind of a make-up piece.
Chyron HR
I know Elaine Benes. I’ve cracked a few off to Elaine Benes. And you, Governor, are no Elaine Benes.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
The west side of MI is full of people like the Bald Eagle. Probably everywhere else is too. His yachts were lifted up by the swells of postwar growth fueled by american Labor yet he feels like he owns the ocean because he sold their employers health insurance plans.
NotMax
@Linda Featheringill
The title is from the piece itself, summarizing what it seems like when Mitt stoops to interact with the hoi polloi.
Also the same quote I chose to pull when referencing this piece on much earlier thread.
the Conster
@Frankensteinbeck:
I won’t watch, but I’ll be very curious to hear about the big bio montage they’ll put together on the big screen at the convention to introduce Mitt Romney to the country. I suspect the entire thing will be about his nice big white family. Will they even be able to mention that he’s a Mormon?
Lojasmo
@Linda Featheringill:
I believe I recall reading that Kerry is standing in for Mitt in debate practice.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
@Linda Featheringill:
Sometimes I agree with that and sometimes, like when Mitt’s speaking, I think BHO should pound him into a rathole and pave over it. I like a good clean fight but obliteration should still be an option.
soonergrunt (nexus 7)
@Randy P: because of course the flaming likudnik Krauthammer has all the leading Arab intellectuals on speed dial.
NotMax
Dave Barry is still doin’ his thang.
The columnists who often focused on modern politics whom I miss most are Molly Ivins and Jack Germond.
Donut
@Linda Featheringill:
I would think the approach might be a variation on how the Biden people prepped him for the Palin debate in 2008. The Obama team will have some zingers locked and loaded, and the President is highly skilled at not appearing to be scripted, but on certain topics, I imagine they will simply hand Willard a bunch a rope and let him hang himself.
Linda Featheringill
@Lojasmo: #28
Now that you mention it, that does sound familiar.
NotMax
@Linda Featheringill
Romney is 6’2″ and Obama is 6’1″.
Am storing that bit of trivia away for later use, to notice if Mitt is wearing lifts during the two-shot of them shaking hands at the first debate.
Walker
I was just explaining to my Gen-Y wife (who only knows Dave Barry from books, as those are the only things she saw growing up overseas) that Dave Barry wrote a “nationally syndicated newspaper column.”
Her response: “What is that? Is it like a blog?”
NotMax
BTW, yet another reason why Romney won’t announce a veep name until convention time rolls much, much closer:
The campaign just released their app for that, and they aren’t about to give up 3 weeks of potential sales income (and the even more valuable collection of personal data that the app sends them). No sirree bob.
4tehlulz
Bald Eagle is the guy who yells “Freebird!” at concerts unironically.
Patricia Kayden
163,000 private sector jobs added in July. Unemployment rate ticks upward.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/story/2012-08-03/jobs-july-main/56730980/1
Shawn in ShowMe
@the Conster:
Just like McCain reminded us “I was a POW” at every opportunity, expect the Mittbot trot out his Salt Lake creds at regular intervals.
TS
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist:
Precisely what Joe Biden should have done to Sarah Palin – Joe was just too nice.
MikeJ
@RSA:
And thank god it sounded nothing like F&LotCT72. I love that book but it ruined a generation of would be political writers who loved it too.
Steve
I sure hope all you fuckers know what Petoskey stones are.
ericblair
@Donut:
If you need another indictment of modern US politics, it’s the need for Democrats to figure out how to successfully punch down on an opponent who has no defensible ideas but a bunch of tribal resentment. Do you pound him into mushy red paste and get him a bunch of sympathy from the mouthbreathing independents, or do you hold off and look like a wimp who doesn’t have the courage of your convictions? Your best option is to tie the guy up in knots enough that he ends up on the floor with a self-inflicted knockout punch, but that’s trickier than winning outright.
Percysowner
@Linda Featheringill: It’s hard to imagine Obama being mean. His whole career is built on being the not angry black guy. It will be harder to not be condescending, but again, I think Obama knows he can’t look like an uppity black man so I think he’ll reign it in.
On a completely different note
Someone should put The Grand Rapids American Pie on a loop on the press box. Yeah it’s not Traverse City, but it is Michigan and it shows that parts of Michigan are really cool and creative as all get out.
Morbo
Four hours? So you’re the ones I’m cursing at for driving 53 mph on M-115?
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
@Steve:
Picked up on the beach and sold to Fudgies and FISHTABs as souvenirs.
NotMax
@Donut
Something along the lines of:
“You’re 100% wrong about that, Mitt.
“You can well and easily afford your being wrong.
“The vast majority of Americans can’t afford your being wrong.”
Steve
@Percysowner: I know a lot of not angry black guys. Why aren’t they all President?
redshirt
@the Conster: Oh, that’s wonderful. I hadn’t thought of it, but how delicious will the video to “introduce” us to Mitt will be.
“In a world of poverty and bad manners, a child was born. The great white hope….”
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
@RSA: I think that guy must have Stockholm Syndrome, only his sympathies have attached to Anne rather than Mitt. My guess (based on her own rather out-of-touch gaffes such as “you people” etc.) is that Anne is only winning and likeable if your only recent basis for comparison is her husband.
geg6
Funny thing is, I know exactly two people who own actual yachts (and, if you don’t know anything about boating, realize that the definition of a yacht doesn’t necessarily mean it’s something like Ari Onassis owned). One is a friend and the other is my ex.
Both are loud and proud Obots.
Susanna K.
The “Bald Eagle” an anomaly? Come on down to South Carolina, where we have that species in abundance. Our state motto ought to be “I got mine.”
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
Also as a born and bred Grand Rapidian, I’d like to thank that reporter who dissed Traverse City and the entire State. Western Michigan, though filled with more conservatives than I would like (I have no idea why the politics outside the cities are so retrograde), is beautiful. There are smaller lakes everywhere and you’re never more than an hour (and usually less) to the Lake Michigan shoreline, which is spectacular. The beaches are practically deserted by east coast standards even on busy holiday weekends. So please keep the place a secret or articles like this one will mean more East Coast assholes will start visiting.
dww44
@Linda Featheringill: Unfortunately you must not live in my red area where his column is a regular feature, along with those of Will, Parker, Sowell, Williams, and Erickson on the editorial pages of my paper. Only counter is Eugene Robinson. That’s all we non-crazy folks get. I envy you.
danielx
@the Conster:
I’m quite certain it will include some adorable footage of the Marquis’ five strapping sons, none of whom have sullied their hands with déclassé activities like sweating his left ventricle off hauling a SAW in Anbar province. I’m sort of surprised that one of them wasn’t detailed to enlist and do just that so he could serve as a campaign prop.
But that would be such a waste of exceedingly high class and expensive human capital, now wouldn’t it?
danielx
@dww44:
There’s a lot of that going around. When our local paper was acquired by Gannett, the national editorial opinion columns remained exactly the same and possibly got worse – they even throw in an occasional column by Jonah Goldberg (aka Jabba the Hack). Hard to believe when I think that the editorial stance of the paper when it was family-owned was slightly to the right of Attila the Hun.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
@danielx:
The only person I know for sure still takes a daily paper is my 95 year old grandmother. I got her a stronger lens for her magnifier when they reduced the type font to save paper. You wouldn’t expect it but she’s very well politically informed. And super pissed at the GOP. Just angry angry angry when she talks about them. She voted R for years because Grandpa did but is a reliable D these days. The paper, the Chronicle in Muskegon MI is surprisingly liberal. It’s a pretty red part of the state and it’s unusual to find a left leaning paper in an industrial part of the Midwest any more.
fraught
Wells Tower is the polical writer of this time and place we are in. A keen eye with an artful prose style. I think that there are a lot of people who want to vote for someone who lurks behind a poly-Plastic mask. If he can successfully stay hidden then that is a quality they can admire. It’s how theylive, never letting their angers and grudges show, wearing their own christian masks, perfecting their own bland smiles to cover their contempt. They love that Mitt can withhold his returns and hide his money while we impotently howl for tranparency. He is their man. He hides his ghost.
SFAW
@Steve:
Can we see their long-form birth certificates? Because I, for one, do not believe they are eligible to run for President.
And I am supported in this position by none other than Herr Professor Doktor Jerome Corsi, and Pseudo-Millionaire and All-Around Swell Guy Donald Trump.
SFAW
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist:
Well, I do, too. But I only read it for the pictures, not the articles.
No, wait, that’s Playboy.
No, wait …
Never mind.
Soonergrunt
@Steve: Fossilized rock from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
So a local nickname for Mitt Romney then?
Just One More Canuck
@jwb: “You shall see thangs, wonderful to tell. You shall see a… a cow… on the roof of a cotton house”.
ericblair
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist:
I do. We got a deal where using it is cheaper than buying litter for our guinea pigs.
Ed Drone
@NotMax:
Too God-damned true this year.
Ed
LanceThruster
@MariedeGournay:
That’s exactly the kind of America I love when I’m fortunate enough to encounter it.
Truly.
LanceThruster
@Susanna K.:
Great laugh line.
xD
LanceThruster
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist:
Goddamnit! Almost choked looking up FISHTABs.
So what’s a Fudgie?
LanceThruster
@LanceThruster:
OIC
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fudgie
xD
RaflW
More accurately, under Mitt:
Isn’t the whole point of PBS Kids programming hours that parents can know that the programs are not fully soul-destroying and seasoned with dozens of blipverts meant to stimulate the young, materialist-acquisitive mind?
Fuck you, Mitt. There is still a place in childhood where kids don’t need to be consumers yet.
(And I know, PBS & their content providers hawk plenty of Elmo puppets, but not in 60,000,000 teevee spots per show).
meadrus
Dave Barry was born in New York State.
trollhattan
@Linda Featheringill:
Maybe a Kang & Kodos line from The Simpsons? Their presidential run was one of the most memorable episodes.
trollhattan
@Soonergrunt:
Had to look them up. I forsee issues ahead with the 6kYO earth cohort if the Willard campaign embraces fossilized coral.
Is he planning a stop at the Creation Museum?
Jebediah
@Steve:
They will be, as soon as it is their turn.