Mitt Romney is not my candidate for president. But I have sought to be respectful of him as a person and as someone who has taken on the great challenge of wanting to lead the USA (that respect, by the way, is not automatic, it does not extend to Newt Gingrich or Michelle Bachmann).
From what I understand about Mr. Romney and his wife, their children and grandchildren, they are an admirable family. Moreover, as a fellow Christian, I respect Mr. Romney’s Mormon faith.
That said, the man had a miserable campaign foray yesterday in London. If I were of a harsher mindset I might say he royally screwed up his photo op visit to Great Britain, raising questions about the Brits ability to handle the Olympic games – and doing it on Olympic eve.
His “performance” was stunningly inept and embarrassing.
Whether it hurts his chances in November is at the moment an unanswerable question. But given our great hubris and ignorance of the world beyond our shores it may be little more than a 24/7 news cycle flap.
However, for me, Mr. Romney’s by far greater offense comes from his autobiography, where he dismisses England as a little isle populated by people who make things no one wants and wrote, with mind-blowing revisionism, if England were attached to the continent of Europe they would have been crushed by Hitler.
Really?
Seriously?
Crushed by Hitler and the Reich? Crushed by the Wehrmacht despite England's being led by Winston Churchill? Crushed by the Nazis despite ultimate American support?
Why would Mr. Romney write that? How could he think that? Why would you go to another sovereign nation and insult that nation, its government and its people? To what end? For what purpose? To effect what cause?
Why? Why? Why?
Is the answer found in an arrogance and ignorance of history that would cause Mr. Romney to write such twaddle? And, since it's highly dubious he wrote his biography alone, what does that tell us about the people around him? Are they equally arrogant and ignorant?
To question England’s heroism and magnificent courage when standing against such overwhelming odds, when that “little isle” literally saved western civilization from the manifest evils of Hitler and his campaign to exterminate Jews from the face of the earth, why would you question, even by innuendo, Winston Churchill's leadership of that great, just and moral cause? Why, in short, would you question the Greatest Man of the 20th Century?
It is incomprehensible to me; save for the knowledge it is monumentally stupid.
Four years ago the Republican Party gave us a vice presidential candidate who said she could see Russia from her back porch. This year they will give us a presidential candidate who well may cause us to forget Sarah Palin.
It may be great for Mr. Obama’s reelection as president, but it will also deny America a campaign worthy of the world’s most powerful office.
