Extremely Proud of This Incredible Toast

Is Mitt Romney the most honest politician out there?

Wednesday offered the latest ‘gaffe’ of Mitt Romney’s troubled, yet methodical presidential campaign. When Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom suggested that his candidate could hit something of a reset button when the general election campaign goes into full swing, he wasn’t breaking any sort of new ground. In what will likely become a term as ubiqutous as ‘swiftboating,’ ‘Willie Horton,’ and ‘windsurfing’ as a memorable part of our American political lexicon, Fehrnstrom likened Romney’s political platform as, “almost like an Etch a Sketch. You can shake it up and we start all over again.” This ‘Etch a Sketch’ moment was immediately ridiculed and parodied by both the left and right. The Romney attitude had been minimized in this moment to its barest construction: pragmatic and brutally unprincipled. 

It is commonly understood that candidates pivot to the center after slogging through primaries in which they have to court the more extreme elements of their party. The only difference between the way Romney has approached certain realities of running a presidential campaign and his predecessors is that he is being more nakedly honest about it. He is making public what past campaigns have only ever hinted at, such as the instance in 2008 when then-Senator Obama campaigned in Ohio by promising to repeal NAFTA, even as a top economic advisor, Austin Goolsbee, was discovered to have been reassuring Canadian government officials that Obama’s words were just campaign bluster, never to be transferred into meaningful action. 

There are very few people that really trust Mitt Romney as a human being. He is understood to be the consummate political hack: He will say and do anything to get elected. He distorts his own history and establishes new positions on the fly if the polling numbers deem it fit. A January Daily Kos/SEIU national poll of registered voters found that only 26% saw Romney possessing strong principles, with 61% of respondents feeling that Romney will say anything to get elected. Because politicians spend their campaigns trying to spin narratives of being the everyman, polls like this are meant to be death-blows, sure signs that voters won’t pull the lever for someone so ‘out of touch.’

So when Romney talks about his friends who own NASCAR teams, how many Cadillacs he owns, or how much he likes the height of trees in Michigan, he exposes how weird, out of touch, and wealthy he is compared to the rest of America. He can’t connect with American voters. It’s robo-Romney versus the fiery, Bible-thumping charlatan Rick Santorum in the primary. Whereas Romney’s positions are poll-tested calculations, Santorum speaks and, presumably, governs from his gut, even if it means scaring half the nation with his medieval views on contraception or suggesting that the thought of a separation of church and state ‘sickens’ him. And in the general election, Romney will take on the imposing narrative of multi-cultural accomplishment that Barack Obama flashes with every winning smile. Robo-Romney cannot compete with the perceived ‘humanity’ that both the firebrand Santorum and approachable Obama exude. 

Here’s the thing: I’m not sure he cares.

Mitt Romney doesn’t seem to be running a campaign predicated on making people love him. He’s going to do whatever it takes to win, and he’s going to be honest about that. And it seems like a lot of what he’s saying is that, “You know what? You might not like it. But you might just end up voting for me.” It’s far from inspirational, and it’s far from a sure bet that such a transparently impersonal strategy can work. But if you’re Robo-Romney, what else can you do? He’s trying to avoid the pitfalls of the robot candidates before him. Try too hard to look normal or tough and all of a sudden you’re John Kerry awkwardly shooting guns in cringe-worthy campaign ads or Michael Dukakis in a tank looking like a twelve year old boy with his helmet on. Romney can’t run away from what he is. Instead, he must embrace the robo-Romney identity he has cultivated. 

Last fall, when, pressed by Rick Perry, Romney explained his irritation at the discovery that he was employing illegal immigrants by saying, “I’m running for office for Pete’s sake, I can’t have illegals!” it was the most honest thing he’s said during this entire campaign. Try as he might, Romney keeps running into these ‘gaffes’ where he announces to the world that his actions are based on what he thinks he needs to do to win an election. 

It’s an oddly postmodern approach, but it is, at its heart, exceptionally honest. Mitt Romney is a candidate that doesn’t run away from the realities of running for office: His strategy for dealing with these allegations of flip-floppery and such is to in a way simply embody it, and dare his critics: “Yeah, I’m a flip-flopping politician? What of it?” 

His campaign continues its long march towards 1,144 delegates, knowing mostly 2 things: He’s going to get the nomination, and that a large part of the Republican base will be deeply unenthused about it. But here’s what I think Romney is thinking: It doesn’t necessarily matter that those people love Santorum or Gingrich and are tepid or even averse to Romney. In November, Romney figures, they’ll still pull the lever for him, once they see Obama on the campaign trail and remember all over again how much they hate him. He can comfortably run as ‘not-Obama’ for a large swath of people who generally dislike him and still win their votes. Santorum and Gingrich will inevitably fall in line because soon, there will be no other choice. 

There is an ironic twist of honesty to Mitt Romney’s campaign: At every turn, they seem to accidentally remind people that so much of what they’re watching is pure political theater. Robo-Romney seems almost the prototypical candidate for those who are disgusted by politics because the hidden message is brutally honest and straightforward in a way that most politicians never dare: “You’re right, I don’t really care that much about you. But you and I both know I’m fabulously successful and must be pretty intelligent under all of this, and that none of those other candidates that try to act like they care about you while they’re campaigning give a damn, either.” The warmth, compassion, and approachability of other political candidates is in a way phonier than the essential phoniness of Mitt Romney. Who cares that he’s an Etch a Sketch, he asks? So is everyone else. He’s just not afraid to call it what it is. In the end, he figures, the insane amount of money that will be at his campaign’s disposal, coupled with a glum economic climate and vague assumptions regarding general technocratic proficiency on Romney’s part could equal a victory for Romney regardless of how enthusiastic the voters are about it. 

Romney has been brutally honest about the fact that he’s running a campaign built to win, and little else. He’s a different kind of Rorschach candidate, in which he dares voters to see whatever they want in him, because there’s nothing he’s not willing to abandon to twist to their particular needs. 

The only difference between Mitt Romney and other politicians is that he’s openly recognized as a soulless, Machiavellian scumbag. And maybe that’s the most honest, genuine thing that any political candidate has ever done. 

Rush Limbaugh Defended Joseph Kony