Monday, September 17, 2012
"Learning to Like Mitt"
When you have to depend on the media (of which you are rightly skeptical), it makes it very difficult to get to know the presidential candidates.
Sometimes, opinions, books, and anecdotes, from a time before their candidacy are more useful for your determination...
Sometimes, opinions, books, and anecdotes, from a time before their candidacy are more useful for your determination...
At WeeklyStandard.com, Andrew Ferguson claims to have not liked Mitt Romney, and set out to find out more about him:
"Now that he’s officially the Republican nominee for president and has an excellent chance of becoming the most powerful man in the world, I feel free to admit, in the full knowledge that nobody cares, that I never liked Mitt Romney. My distaste for him isn’t merely personal or political but also petty and superficial. There’s the breathless, Eddie Attaboy delivery, that half-smile of pitying condescension in debates or interviews when someone disagrees with him, the Ken doll mannerisms, his wanton use of the word 'gosh'—the whole Romney package has been nails on a blackboard to me.
Evidently not many of my fellow Republicans agreed. I assumed I was missing something and resolved to dive into the Romney literature, which I soon discovered should post a disclaimer, like a motel pool: NO DIVING. By my count the literature includes one good book, The Real Romney, by two reporters from the Boston Globe. That’s the same Globe with the leftward tilt to its axis and a legendary anti-Romney animus—which lends authority to their largely favorable portrait. The flattering details of Romney’s life were so numerous and unavoidable that the authors, dammit, had no choice but to include them."
