The person who organized the sadistic attack isn’t the one who gets to decide whether or not it is an old and unimportant issue.
You, Marley, get to decide for yourself whether or not this will impact your voting decision. I get to decide for myself, and other voters decide for themselves. Romney has taken that choice away from you, and all of us, because he feels it isn’t politically expedient to acknowledge the attack he orchestrated.
The Washington Post reported several others. None were as horrifying as the haircut story, but leading a blind teacher into a storage closet (to name one example) didn’t make Romney look good either.
It’d be much better to demonstrate this based on his busines career and his platform than his high school years.
I never said Romney gets to decide. I said the subject itself is transparently unimportant. Say he’d been by all accounts a fantastic guy in high school but had the same career as a venture capitalist, been the same governor of Massachusetts and senate candidate and run the same presidential campaign he’s running. Would you give half a crap? Would it alter your perceptions of his political and business career- the questionable impact of his Bain deals, the desperate flipflops, the cases where he demonstrates little concern for anybody else? I’m guessing it wouldn’t, because I know I wouldn’t care at all. I’ve never argued there was anything wrong in reporting this stuff. I’m arguing that it’s just not important.
I think there’s a valid issue being discussed here. Romney shows a pattern of how he uses his power against those who don’t have the same level of power - a popular straight student harassing a gay student; a seeing guy playing jokes on a blind guy; a pet owner putting his dog up on the car roof; a executive talking about how he fires people. And while these things happened a long time ago, he hasn’t disavowed any of them.
Now this guy is running for President of the United States. So there’s legitimate reasons to ask how he would handle the power of that office. Would he show restraint or would he say “I’m the most powerful man in the world. I can do anything I want to anyone.”
That should be asked about anybody who is running for president. I think it’s discouraging that three of the four examples you’re talking about happened 30 to 45 years ago and only one has anything to do with his time in business or politics. Those are the centerpieces of his campaign - particularly the business side; we’re supposed to oblige him by pretending he was not the moderate governor of a liberal state - and we’re arguing about what he was like in high school and how he crated a dog that died 20 years ago. I grant you that it makes Romney come off as personally unlikeable, and he needs no help in coming across that way, but it implies there aren’t more serious criticisms to be made.
Or maybe I misunderstood how it applies to Romney today. If he’s elected, do you think he might hold down a visiting head of state and forcibly cut his hair or give him a swirlie? I admit the president probably shouldn’t do that.
I’ve never known a venture capitalist, a governor nor a senate candidate.
I have known shitty bullies who take it upon themselves to object to how someone looks, and are too gutless to pick on a victim by themselves so instead get a gang together to help them.
I have known shitty people who were bullies and then who either “forget” what they did in the past, or brush it off as “pranks”.
The bully thing makes it personal. So he was an asshole venture capitalist. Whatever, this does not really resonate with me. However, if I learn he was an asshole high school bully? This makes me hate him on a visceral level.
That’s extremely unfortunate because it suggests you’re judging candidates by the shallowest criteria. Putting thousands of people out of work or slashing funding for social programs is a hell of a lot more important than being a dick to a few people in high school because it says much more about his policy ideas and can’t be written off as a youthful mistake.
I’ll put it this way. Sometimes that kind of decision is necessary. Sometimes it’s just one choice out of many. I’d prefer that my President, when making a decision like that, actually cares about the people it affects. When he puts those people out of work, I want him to lose sleep that night, and say “I wish there was a better option.” I want him to look for better options.
These stories illustrate to me Romney’s inability to care. It reinforces the idea that my discomfort, my problems, are utterly meaningless to him. Stories about sick dogs strapped to cars and shuttered factories are funny, lighthearted tales from his youth. Sadistically attacking a kid from his school is such a non-event in his life, he either cannot recall doing it, or his primary goal is to avoid the topic. Can’t he feel a little shame for his poor behavior, can’t he care about this person he harmed? Can’t he tell us he wishes he made a different choice? (and not just because it makes him look bad today)
This is the person I want to have enormous power over the welfare of my country’s residents, the power to order military strikes, the power to affect economies all over the world?
There are reasons to think Romney is not that guy that having nothing to do with haircuts or Seamus the dog.
In today’s climate Republicans avow dickish policies openly, which does make it easier. But what positions a president really holds may or may not be reflected by what he campaigns on. The best way to judge him is to judge his background.
Remember, Bush campaigned as a compassionate conservative. I looked at his background and personality and concluded he was a moron and a jerk, and voted for my first Democrat for president ever. I think I was right. Anyone thinking that the Mass. Romney is the real Romney and the primary Romney was a fake to appeal to the right might think again given his background. He may shake the Etch-a-Sketch, but there is a background pattern of bullying burned into the screen. We ignore that at our peril.
That’s hilarious! “Seamus, that’s the dog, was outside…THE CAR!”
I bet you were his biggest fan before this.
Regards,
Shodan
Didn’t think he was the best choice, no. But now I think he’s an asshole bully. He was a bully then, and his behavior this week has shown that he has not done any reflection or grown as a person since high school.
I just thought of something. Romney’s “I don’t recall” gives great possibilities to people who want to discredit him. I could see scores of people from his past coming forward with similar allegations–some true, some false. How could he defend himself? Is he going to say “I don’t recall giving Joe a swirley, but I know for sure I didn’t give Dave a wegie.”?
I’m getting curious now about “boarding school” culture of the boarding schools for the very or even filthy rich in the US. I’ve always heard about hazing at boarding schools in the UK, with a fair portion of that hazing being physical as opposed to just mental torture. At the time Romney was a student, what kind of hazing did the students expect to undergo?
And, no, I’m not asking this question in an effort to vindicte Romney. I’m genuinely curious.
Horserace Claptrap
Marley23: That Scissorhands Mitt is an unrepentant bully is an emotional lens by which some will interpret his subsequent behavior as an adult. A small but nontrivial share of the population find schoolyard violence more than disturbing-- it hits their reptilian brain. What makes this electorally toxic is that this share cuts across ideologies. So methinks this story can move the needle. Mitt could have defused this bomb with ease, though as you pointed out in another thread that also would have given the story more oxygen in the media. So now it’s sort of a whispering campaign, relegated to the water cooler and comments section of the web.
Policy
The best guide to GWBush’s Presidency came from the dishonesty with which he promoted his tax-cutting plan. Through that lens one could suss his deficit enhancing polities as well as the lies leading up to the Iraq War. Digging a little deeper into the policy issues is the best way to measure the character of the politician. But most people don’t have wonkish tendencies – and there’s no reason why they should.
My take is that a superior system would have fewer checks and balances and more accountability. That way disinterested voters could evaluate results rather than guess at what might have happened if say the Dems had 60 votes in the Senate rather than 59 for a longer period of time, because Al Franken was only seated in July 2009 while Ted Kennedy passed on on in August 2009. See? Only political junkies can follow this stuff. I’m not even sure I got that right. The two party system, buttressed by winner-take-all voting, also permits an undue amount of tribalism and affinity voting.
Link to thread on Romney’s problems with the truth: Does Mitt Romney have a problem with the truth? - Politics & Elections - Straight Dope Message Board Steve Benen has had a weekly column on the subject for a while.
ETA:
Good question. I suspect though that the relevant variable is “Boarding school” rather than “Very rich”. I remember rumors that boarding schools could get a little rough at times, though I never learned the specifics AFAIK. I’ve had female relatives of an older generation than Romney’s who weren’t too happy at them.
Are you serious? Do you honestly think that’s what I was saying?
No, I don’t think that’s what you were saying. I was attempting to illustrate what I see as the absurdity of worrying about Romney’s presidency based on what he did in high school. I’m not sure I want to go farther in arguing about this because there’s no defense for doing something like this, and the haircut thing is cruel enough to be actually disturbing. But I think it’s the least relevant possible way to raise a legitimate issue about the guy.
You are correct from an entirely unemotional, logical point of view. Frequently though, humans don’t always operate on a 100% logical level.
**Measure for Measure **had a good point when they said:
Of course- and I’m not criticizing people’s emotional responses to the story. But if we’re talking about logical ways to predict the actions of a president Romney or raise issues about his judgment, I don’t think this is a good way.
Think of it this way, the high school incident isn’t THE thing that should cause someone to distrust Romney. It is a data point, a set of pixels, or one more puzzle piece in the picture that we’re painting of Romney the Man. By itself, it’s nothing, a stupid youthful mistake. Add to it other instances of his misbehavior, his lousy reaction to being reminded of the event, and one may begin to think he’s not just a Moderate Republican from Massachusetts, or a guy parroting the Rep party line.
Sure, I have a set of political goals, and prior decisions, but what goes on behind the scenes, who he is as a person, is something that will crop up during new decisions that he hasn’t actually had to make before.