I'm not usually one to cheer for another person's misfortunes, but there is so darned much at stake in our choice of president this November that my ever-lovin' liberal heart has positively been doing somersaults in the wake of the Great Donor Event "Leak" of the Romney video and transcripts this week. I'm reminded of that eloquent line of Michelle Obama's in her DNC speech, about how being president doesn't shape who you are; it reveals it--I guess the same could be said of supposedly "private" wealthy donor events. Romney had no reason to be anything but himself--and that self has now been broadcast around the world, shocking those who didn't know he felt those things, and confirming the beliefs of those of us who did. I've always been someone who believes the best about people, or tries to--sometimes naively--but as far as Romney is concerned, the mask is off. Unlike a masquerade ball, however, he can't just put the mask back on and go back to the party. Everyone knows who he is now.
And who is he? We've gotten an inkling of the real Romney when he's said these odd things in the past and then tried to explain them--like about not caring about the poor. When pressed, he said, "there's a safety net," or something similar. I remember thinking about the hundreds of homeless people in my town--and those are just the visible ones--and wondering what on earth he meant. He keeps talking about his need to focus on "the people in the middle," and again I have to wonder what he means. He does not apparently mean the middle class, as that would be me and the stratum of most of my social circle, and his policies and beliefs certainly are not geared to us. But that's not really the main issue--the most alarming and upsetting one that's been so starkly and "eloquently" reiterated by Romney in the leaked video (though he claims it was "inelegantly" said) is this: "... my job is not to worry about those people [the 47% who support Obama and he claims "don't pay taxes"]. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." It's been said by various commentators that Romney's explanations after his "gaffes" can be worse than the original--he just digs himself a deeper hole. In "defending" his remarks, once they were leaked, it became clear that he was conflating numbers of people who don't pay income tax (which is only part of the taxes we pay) and Obama supporters. But any way you slice it, he basically stated to his high-level donors that he would have no intention of addressing a Romney presidency to that rather large segment of the population--nearly half the voting public! The obvious corollary is that he would simply expect to govern those people who supported him!
There are so many other alarming, aggravating, infuriating things he said, with all their ramifications, but I want to just hone in on this one issue of who a president thinks he or she is serving. I'll end this post with a simple but moving rejoinder from Obama. The contrast between candidates has grown so vast this week, they might as well be on different planets:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/18/obama-mitt-romney-video_n_1895038.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false
"Different planets" is the right metaphor, because each puts forth the vision of a completely different world--one in which 47% of citizens are irrelevant, and the other that encompasses every last one of us.
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