While Mitt Romney hurriedly attempts to seize and exploit his resurgence in popularity and success at the U.S. presidential debates, Obama and his campaign team are no doubt bewildered and dismayed. Romney's fresh confidence and apparent newfound competency is profoundly worrying, and not just to the Democratic party and its voters. In my opinion, if Romney is elected in November he will be by some measure the most dangerous and unacceptable President since the days of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.
Very few comparisons or distinctions have been made between Romney and the most recent Republican President, George W. Bush, and I think this is even unfair to the latter. The late journalist and author Christopher Hitchens unforgettably described Bush in an impromptu comment as "unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things." While this may be true, and at several points a suitable enough description of Romney himself, he is another (and far more sinister) matter entirely.
For all his inadequacies, Bush often appeared as slightly hapless, naive, and witless individual, and so for those reasons can be regarded with a strange pity. Romney, however, exhibits the characteristics of a mean elitist, cynic, and callous megalomaniac - not to mention his absurd fundamentalist religious beliefs.
Romney's atrocious comments and behaviour are impertinent to the extent that when asked for his assessment of greater consumer choice in health insurance, he stated: "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me." Romney was also secretly filmed at a private donor party dinner earlier this year, where he told the exceedingly wealthy audience, "There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to take care of them, who believe that they are entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you name it."
As though to discuss the poor and under-privileged in such a vulgar manner wouldn't be enough (especially for a politician), it should be noted that Romney's net worth after a career in private equity is understood to be between $190–250 million, and he has been extremely reluctant to release his tax returns. Incredibly, some of them remain withheld from public inquiry. He has also described American middle class income as "$200,000 to $250,000 and less." When heckled during a 2011 campaign stop in Iowa, he responded, "Corporations are people, my friend." Elaborating further, he continued; "Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People's pockets. Human beings, my friend."
In a similar demeanor of ignorance, when asked if he followed NASCAR during a visit to the Daytona International Speedway earlier this year, he responded; "Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans, but I have some friends who are NASCAR team owners."
Whenever questioned or criticised for his comments, he is remarkably insistent and unapologetic. When challenged on whether he maintained his criticisms of Obama's relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, he retorted, "I'm not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said. Whatever it was."
His infamous attempt to rectify the palpable awkwardness of a photograph opportunity interacting with young inner-city African Americans on a Martin Luther King, Jr Day parade in Jacksonville, Florida, was to inexplicably and loudly shout "Who let the dogs out! Who? Who?" before soon afterwards describing the jewelry on a young black toddler as "bling, bling!"
This crass racial stereotyping and desperate appeal to black culture has not been lost on the African American public. He was loudly booed at an NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Convention when attempting to convey and reiterate his questionable sympathy for and agreement with the necessity of the continuing effort to protect and promote racial equality in America.
His foreign policy has also been extensively scrutinised, and yet more errors have exacerbated this deserved criticism. In the same leaked footage of Romney at the party donor fundraiser, he told the audience that Palestinians "have no interest" in peace and are "committed to the destruction of Israel." He also ridiculed Obama and current American foreign policy for attempting to "sit down with people like [Vladimir] Putin and [Hugo] Chávez and [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, and that they'll find that we're such wonderful people that they'll go on with us, and they'll stop doing bad things."
Romney is also an ardent Mormon, although is conspicuously quiet about his own personal beliefs and how they may shape and influence government policy. Naturally, Romney is embraced by the Republican Party and powerful Christian Right lobby. He is also, unsurprisingly, a staunch advocate of the death penalty. He has opposed abortion rights throughout his life (though recently has appeared to concede some basic abortion rules), and has also remodeled his views on issues such as gay marriage, gun control, the environment, and stem cell research several times - although in most instances, his exact opinions remain opaque. These political modifications and mid-course corrections are understandably suspect.
For all his gaffes, ridiculous faux pas, abhorrent comments and remarks, clandestine and ruthless capitalism, arrogant ethnocentrism, and disdainful elitism, it is certainly not impossible that in a little over two months time, Romney may find himself the most powerful man in the world. Moreover, that he may triumph over an incumbent president who is articulate, moderate, charismatic, educated, of admirably reasoned judgement and exceptional intelligence? A depressing contemplation indeed.
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