I truly hope discussion about the Post piece doesn’t turn into debate about its timing versus substance.
Reporters are digging into Romney’s post, just as they dug into Obama’s (Rev. Wright, etc). In doing the digging, they came upon the recollections of grown, prosperous men about a bullying incident that haunted them through the years. A peer at their school was harassed, held down and sheared. The prosperous son of a Governor/Big 3 CEO committed the act. That’s pretty damn mean.
What concerns me all the more is that Romney seems to acknowledge the incident, though with faint memory. I think a human being should remember something like that–that is, unless they are wired differently.
Of course, this wouldn’t be as relevant if Romney’s policy positions didn’t reveal callous attitudes towards the GLBT community. Physically restraining a “different” student is one things; policy prescriptions that restrain an entire population from military service, the right to marriage or even civil unions, brings such dehumanization to scale.
I find this incident so insignificant to why – or why not – Mitt Romney should be our next president that I’ve been searching for some larger social significance.
A few years removed from college, I think back to all the pictures some of my friends and I didn’t take for fear of where and when they might resurface. It wasn’t worth putting ourselves in particular situations, we figured, no matter how typical they may be for twenty-somethings in college.
And though we were probably right, I found these experiences frustratingly calculated. Think about all that you have learned about yourself because of the variety of your experiences. Shameful or satisfying, angering or alleviating, it’s safe to say they were all educating in one way or another.
Do I wish Romney hadn’t mistreated that kid 50 years ago? Of course. And I’m sure Mitt wishes otherwise, too.
But until a slew of stories arise that reveal Romney was a pathological bully, I’m looking at this as a moment from which Romney learned right from wrong. He made a mistake – we all do – and he learned from it. Frankly, I’d be much more disappointed in him if I found out Romney stood on the sidelines while his friends picked on a classmate simply because Mitt was afraid it would come back to haunt his future political career.
Experience life and make some mistakes – it’ll be clear enough to your potential investors or voters whether or not you learned from them.
Great point about Romney’s response needing to be honest and opening inroads for an important dialogue.
Like so many instances of public discussion of a public figure’s heretofore private life incidences , it’s the response –not the act—that’s the thing. The teen behavior by Romney, if true, is reflective of a narrow and hurtful view of homosexuality while he as a teen. But if he deliberately deceived the public about the incident as a 65 year old candidate for president, that would bother me quite a bit more.
I believe that if a candidate is comfortable with themselves and their past, it allows the public (voters) to be comfortable with them—and their past. They trust the person who stands before them today that their prior mistakes were duly noted, reconciled, and learned from. But if the person has not made this peace with their past bad acts and integrated them into their present selves, they are merely managing a public image not reflective of who they really are. And will struggle to gain credibility with the voters who they seek to lead.
I think the answer to Jonathan’s original question–whether or not the actions of youth should disqualify someone from office–is not really black or white. I think, probably, if somebody murders someone else in the first degree when they are 16 years old, that should disqualify them from being President, ever.
On the other hand, if someone, say, makes a really sick and inappropriate joke about killing people of the opposite party when they are 16 or 17, that probably shouldn’t disqualify them from ever holding office. The question then becomes–where on this spectrum does Mitt Romney’s actions fall?
Judging by the responses to this question by some of the folks in this debate, this story resonates more with people my age and younger to a much greater degree than those who are older than me. I think this is probably because attitudes about bullying of homosexuals are changing in a big way, and because my generation is grappling with a horrible plague of teenage homosexual suicides. I am by no means a swing voter–I even went so far as to say Barack Obama will be remembered by history as the greatest President of my lifetime–but during the GOP nomination fight, my attitude was “Lord help us if anyone beside Mitt Romney or John Huntsman comes out of this thing.” That is to say, I don’t dislike Mitt Romney, and actually think he wouldn’t be a bad President. However, this turn of events honestly makes me question that.
I strongly disagree with Jonathan when he said that clearly, the smartest move politically for Mitt Romney in this situation was to lie. His actions, 50 years ago though they were, presented a huge opportunity for inroads with the American public. I think if Mitt Romney had decided to offer an honest and heartfelt apology along the lines of Tony Campolo from the video earlier, it would have been a huge positive–not just for the Mitt Romney for President campaign, but for the campaign against anti-gay bigotry writ large. Instead, he chose to lie.
I also strongly disagree with Jonathan and others when they say this sort of behavior does not mesh with the popular opinion of Mitt Romney. The prevailing opinion of Mitt Romney through the eyes of his opponents is that he is an elitist, aloof, out-of-touch jerk who doesn’t understand anything about anyone who isn’t like himself. As evidence, his opponents point to the $10,000 bet he placed with Gov. Rick Perry, his joking about friends who own NASCAR teams, his quip about his wife “driving a few Cadillacs”, and his car elevator. The narrative up until now has been somewhat convincing, and this story really drives that point home.
Most of the actions of youth can be forgiven; but Mitt Romney’s choices both while he was young and dealing with his youthful indiscretions drive home a narrative about Mitt Romney that give me great pause about his character as a person and about what kind of President he would be.
For me, at least, the aftermath of this story changes the whole narrative of this campaign for me. Before, I really wanted Barack Obama to be given a second term, but I wouldn’t have been overly upset with President Romney. Now, however, I really don’t want this guy to be the President.
I have read the RP debate with moderate interest for two reasons. First, I don’t care what Romney, Obama, or any other candidate did in high school or grade school. Let’s hope the world finds out less about all our lives in those years.
Secondly, this crazy story makes no sense. Look at Romney, listen to Romney and ask yourself if this guy could beat up or pick on anybody.
I have met Mr. Romney and even spent a small amount of time with him behind the spotlights. His friends would call him kind, gracious, well mannered, and curious. His enemies would call him a weak sissy who is afraid of his own shadow.
As a Marine I would not classify Mitt as a tough kick butt kind of person. I don’t think that is his style. That’s OK, we can’t all be John Wayne.
But seriously, does anyone think this guy ever picked on people? I could see him spreading gossip or something girly like that, but not to throw a punch or intimidate anyone.
We interrupt this fascinating and revealing debate with the uber-emotional rantings by this site’s founder.
This debate has torn the scab off two pet peeves that have been the target of some of my most agonized rhetorical fury during my post-political recovery.
First, with due respect to my friend, the Frozen Chosen Mr. Berkowitz — as well as dozens of columnists who’ve weighed in similarly over the past week — I am not persuaded at all that Romney’s reaction to the disclosure of events is troubling. In saying he didn’t remember the incident, I assume he lied. Any good lawyer or political consultant would have advised him to do the same. There was no advantage in him extending the debate by confirming or disputing the story, and no one can prove that he remembered it or not.
I do not think Romney should be blamed for lying about an event that does not deserve punishment today, just as I don’t think Bill Clinton should have been impeached for lying about personal indiscretions, nor that my friend Jeff Smith should have been incarcerated for a year for falling into a perjury trap about a minor campaign finance violation. People lie because they are embarrassed, or because they don’t want to get bad publicity, but if what they lie about is not actionable in itself, I have trouble claiming that the lie is a major offense.
Second, I dispute the notion shared by many of the previous contributors — as well, again, as by many pols and pundits this week — that we can draw some psychological conclusions about Romney’s performance as President based on something he did as a teenager. Of course, if a qualified therapist had Romney on the couch for a year’s worth of weekly sessions, and Romney shared his life story, the therapist could develop some meaningful conclusions about how Romney’s childhood shaped him in the decades that followed. But as any good therapist would tell you, they could not draw the same conclusions simply through reading a series of unrelated press accounts of his six decade life. Indeed, they would tell you: “This is not my patient; it would be irresponsible for me to draw such conclusions.”
This is simply another excuse the press uses to pick apart the dirty laundry in a politician’s private life. This psychobabble does no service to the debate except selling papers and encouraging clicks from readers who love to revel in the misery of the famous, and/or who have been brainwashed by the movies and the media to expect full and consistent narratives about famous people.
And by the way — this particular story matches no narrative of Mitt Romney, the candidate or human being, that I have ever read to date. The dominant narrative — one I have been inclined (brainwashed?) to accept as true — is that he is a politician who would do anything to get elected. In 1994, he was pro-gay in order to run against Ted Kennedy, and stayed pro-gay through his election as Governor of Massachusetts. By 2012 he became anti-gay to appeal to the right wing of his party. My guess he really doesn’t care much about the issue; his sole focus is on getting elected President.
(And even that narrative is unfair. I am sure Romney cares about something — there are some ideas that he would never abandon for political expediency. There simply are no perfectly consistent narratives for us flawed human beings.)
The fact that the 18 year old Romney was an asshole bully sheds no light on anything except the fact that when he was 18, he was an asshole bully. If I were his principal at the time, I would have expelled him and turned over the evidence to authorities to prosecute him for assault.
(Of course, at that time — as well as in my own childhood — incidents like these were quite common and rarely punished severely: “Boys will be boys!” Replace “gay” with “Jew,” and I suffered a similar humiliation on a handful of occasions. Thank God today, society is moving in the direction of treating bullying as the crime that it is.)
However, as I concluded in my introductory post, his stupid, mean, hurtful behavior as a teenager does not disqualify Mitt Romney to be President.
That Mitt Romney bullied a young gay man as a teenager should not, in and of itself, be disqualifying; it happened fifty years ago.
What should be disqualifying is the fact that Romney chased his national security spokesman Richard Grenell out of campaign HQ with a proverbial scissors two weeks ago, when his campaign folded to the pressure of anti-gay social conservatives and told Grenell – a respected foreign policy expert – that Grenell would not be allowed to speak on the record.
And what should be disqualifying is that Romney accepted Grenell’s resignation willingly – “whew, that mini-crisis is over” – instead of having the character to say, “No. I hired you to be our national security spokesman because of your credentials and that hasn’t changed just because a few bigots have a problem with your sexual orientation.”
That lack of character – signs of which some may detect in his role as a Cranbrook ringleader – is why Republicans, independents, and Democrats agree that Romney is one of the least likeable presidential candidates since Nixon.
I’ve been invited to comment and am hesitant because I try to ignore the digging into candidates early lives as evidence of current temperament and clues about leadership style. But I have heard a little about this incident and will try to offer some constructive commentary.
From what I can gather there were several incidents involving a young Mitt Romney, the now-Republican nominee for president, and some pranks that could be interpreted as “insensitive” if not “cruel” to young homosexual males in his class at prep school.
I believe the story goes that Mitt was traveling by car from Massachusetts to Canada and tied a classmate to the roof of the car for the entire 12 hour drive. Presumably it has now leaked out that the reason the boy was tied to the roof of the car wasn’t just because he was a democrat. But because he was gay too.
I find this sort of teen boy prankster mentality offensive and embarrassing but probably not indicative of some deep seated character flaw that Romney possesses. For example, there are other stories—I believe—about Romney routinely traveling with his pet dog attached to the roof of the car. It had nothing to do with the dog’s sexual orientation. Romney simply felt he would sully the interior of the car. I suspect Romney felt the same way about the gay democratic boy.
So, what we see upon closer examination is that Romney wasn’t guilty so much of homophobia but rather a foolish teen prank that was perhaps a harbinger of Mitt’s well documented metrosexual and neatnik inclinations.
Besides, common sense suggests that there really could not have been an anti-gay motive behind young Mitt’s antics. First off the name of the prep school was Cranbrook. That’s a pretty gay name for a high school, if you ask me. And it was an all boy prep school. So clearly, any boy who attended Cranbrook was already either himself homosexual or at least completely comfortable being suspected of being a homosexual. It just doesn’t add up.
Was Mitt an anti-gay bully? Are you kidding? Have you seen this guy? Was he a meticulous metrosexual prankster who feared gay democratic germs being left in his car while he drove to Canada? Probably—and nothing more. And by the way, what was he driving to Canada for anyway? That causes a whole set of other much more serious concerns about Mitt’s fitness for our highest office.
The failure to recollect the incident is astounding. His camp must be glad not to have to deal with a birth certificate question. And an apology as conditional as the one that was offered lacks the requisite sincerity. Short version is that the dubious response to a long ago boyhood incident is revealing about the man who would be president today.
[Click here to follow the entire RP Debate]
