Howard Fineman’s Essay, Partly Contrasting Romney Father and Son, Hints about Unfavorably Changing Times, as Well

© 2012 Peter Free

 

20 July 2012

 

 

Citation

 

Howard Fineman, Mitt Romney And Father Follow Bush Family Father-Son Reversal, Huffington Post (20 July 2012)

 

 

When the times become more about facade than reality, we lose

 

Columnist Howard Fineman revisited a theme I tackled a while back, regarding the difference between the George Romney (father) and Mitt Romney (son).

 

He also contrasted the two presidential prongs of the Bush Dynasty.

 

Mr. Fineman concluded:

 

Having watched their fathers embarrassed politically -– President George H.W. Bush by losing reelection in 1992 to an Arkansas hound dog named Bill Clinton; George Romney by being “brainwashed” out of the race in 1968 -– the sons focused on winning at all costs, even if that means speaking mostly to the converted.

 

© 2012 Howard Fineman, Mitt Romney And Father Follow Bush Family Father-Son Reversal, Huffington Post (20 July 2012)

 

 

The Romneys

 

After writing that 1968 presidential nomination seeker, George Romney, had released an overview of his past tax filings, during an era when no one else did such things, Fineman continued:

 

He was so candid and forthcoming, in fact, that his honesty on another matter cost him whatever shot he might have had at the GOP nomination that year.

 

A relative dove on Vietnam, Romney explained away his earlier support for the war by saying that he had been “brainwashed” by the Pentagon into believing rosy scenarios about the bloody conflict.

 

His un-programmed confession not only got him in trouble with hawks in both parties, it made him seem like a credulous fool.

 

Sen. Eugene McCarthy, a tart-tongued anti-war Democrat, essentially finished Romney with one remark. “Romney says he was brainwashed,” said McCarthy. “I think a light rinse would have been sufficient.”

 

Romney’s son Mitt saw this humiliation. He’s been trying to make up for it ever since.

 

© 2012 Howard Fineman, Mitt Romney And Father Follow Bush Family Father-Son Reversal, Huffington Post (20 July 2012) (paragraph split)

 

Ergo, Mitt’s adamant privacy regarding his taxes, a determined lack of candor and position-taking at every turn, and a complete inability to admit that he has ever made mistakes.

 

Interpersonally, where Romney senior indulged in impromptu conversations with American workers on the shop floors and was Walter Reuther’s (United Auto Workers) friend, Romney junior’s rich guy aloofness is everywhere apparent.

 

And so on.

 

 

The Bush presidents

 

Bush senior’s willingness to deal with Actual Reality was not mirrored by his son’s subsequent end runs of it:

 

Bush the Elder, son of a moderate Republican senator from Connecticut who was a golfing partner of Ike’s, fitfully supported federal civil rights measures and famously moved his lips to raise taxes in 1991. As a result, he became a pariah in his own post-Reagan party.

 

In office, George W. cut taxes radically and almost never challenged the Right. And he famously went to Baghdad a decade after his father refused to do so at the end of the first Gulf War.

 

© © 2012 Howard Fineman, Mitt Romney And Father Follow Bush Family Father-Son Reversal, Huffington Post (20 July 2012) (paragraph split)

 

 

A few things that Mr. Fineman’s essay hints at

 

Four points:

 

(1) Truthfulness has cost American candidates elections for quite some time.  Which, of course, doesn’t say anything good about the American public.

 

But in a prior era, at least some politicians still had the courage to be honest.  Today, that quality is extinct.

 

(2) Political wit, and perhaps the public intelligence necessary to interpret it, has gone downhill.

 

Who today would make the following, deliciously subtle comment — that actually takes a concealed sledgehammer to impugning someone else’s intelligence?

 

“Romney says he was brainwashed,” said McCarthy. “I think a light rinse would have been sufficient.”

 

(3) And being friends with people different than us is significantly less likely.  Especially between the chief executive officer of an auto-manufacturing company and its labor union leader.

 

The United States has become a morass of viciously squabbling smallnesses.

 

(4) It is difficult to deal successfully with real trends and events, when no one is willing to see them.

 

 

Disclaimer — perhaps I am biased

 

I like straightforward, honest people.

 

I liked George Romney’s public persona.  I trusted him.  Perhaps because his integrity was obvious and he had the humility to admit when his thinking had gone astray.  After all, who among us has not been seriously mistaken at several times in our lives?

 

In contrast, I detest Mitt Romney’s public persona. He reverses his father’s human strengths at every opportunity.  Mitt Romney’s public demeanor exemplifies the repellant personal and professional depths to which American political character has sunk.

 

I admired the aristocratic Bush Elder’s statesmanship and his willingness to see that some problems can be intelligently managed, but not solved.

 

And I understood Bush junior’s wish to bash recalcitrant problems into shape, but I opposed the unrealistic forms that his attempts took.

 

However, I much preferred Bush junior’s determined openness about his perspectives on the world, to Mitt Romney’s complete lack of (public) spine on anything substantive at all.

 

 

The moral? — Times changed, and they went nowhere good

 

Howard Fineman’s essay says more than one might think, at first glance.