the whole romney thing

i've chosen not to write about mitt romney until now--nothing more than a dispassionate, superficial recitation of his electibility issues will be found on this blog, nor have i ever even commented on him in any substantive way anywhere else.

there's a sad and simple reason for this: cynic that i may be, and as unbelievable as it may now seem, i somehow allowed this guy to sneak past my defenses and break my political heart. i still feel like a fool and it fucking kills me to admit i was taken in any politician, but now that he's outta the race i feel the need to lance this boil that's been festering inside me for lo these many months.

believe it or not, i once had high hopes for romney--he was the one that was gonna make me believe again. i've watched him for years--long before he was even a blip on the national radar--and he got my attention, as no other politician in recent memory has, for the following reasons:

• unlike most scions of successful politicians (i.e., al gore, g. w. bush, any third-generation kennedy you wanna name), romney wasn't some mediocrity who managed to coast his way into prominence on daddy's reputation--this guy not only succeeded on his own in the private sector, he did so brilliantly.
• he's proven himself time after time to be a competent, capable executive with a knack for walking into complex situations that are broken and fixing them.
• he's a highly-disciplined, focused individual who has lived a clean, scandal-free life, thrived within the confines of an extremely demanding religion, remained happily married to his high-school sweetheart and raised five productive and (to all appearances) non-wastrel sons (and yes, virginia, even though i may myself be a degenerate, i still look for indications of character in my politicians--and unlike most i can think of who simply talk the talk, romney has actually walked it).
  
• as a republican governor of arguably the most liberal state in the union, he proved to be a progressive problem-solver who not only balanced his adopted state's budget, but, with bipartisan support (including that of ted kennedy), forged the nation's first workable statewide universal healthcare plan.
• he has repeatedly demonstrated the ability--almost unheard-of in a politician--to put aside personal bias and ideology on any given issue and instead collect and focus on the relevant data in order to most optimally address whichever problem crossed his path.
• despite his fiscal pragmatism, to all appearances he has always been a social progressive.

so when he announced his intention to run for president, i not only welcomed it--hell, i'd been counting the days--i jumped for what passes in me for joy, because of all the potential candidates of either party, he was the only one i thought might possess the skill-set necessary to have even a chance at fixing all the fucking messes we're in.

and then he opened his mouth and started talking, and the dream just...well, it died a slow agonizing death.

see, i guess i'm an idiot, because i, in my naivete, just assumed the guy would run on his actual fucking record--that he'd position himself as a moderate problem-solving consummate-executive republican with the most actual real-world experience and cross-party appeal of any of the candidates; i mean, it never even in my wildest dreams occurred to me that romney would try to rewrite history and, in a pathetically futile effort to pander to the evangelicals who would despise him as a heathen no matter what, position himself as the goddam conservative choice, for chrissakes.

additionally, it really shook me that a man i had seen as principled could seemingly abandon those principles with such ease--i mean, was he lying about his values and beliefs back when he was running for governor of massachusetts, or was he lying about them now?

at first, finding it hard to let go of the dream (especially in light of my choice of alternatives), i tried to excuse, equivocate and rationalize (ok, fine--it doesn't really matter what he has to say in order to get elected because they all lie; all that matters is what he ultimately does), but i could only stomach that for so long--and then, as i watched him choke in the debates when even i coulda taken his pathetic competition down with one hand tied behind my back, i had to come to the painful conclusion that this guy, for all his skills and accomplishments, doesn't have what it takes after all.

in fact, i feel that i can say without qualification that the only smart decision mitt romney has made since electing to enter the race is electing to get out.

it's been a bitter pill for me to swallow--made even harder by the certain knowledge that any alternative to him you can name is even worse.

[and a final note to governor romney: if in your next life you choose to launch your craven conservative-republican presidential campaign from a position of state governor, you might wanna try doing it from--oh i dunno--how about your home state of michigan, where (a) you'd easily be elected governor, and (b) you might actually have a chance of representing as an actual conservative--i mean, christ, did you seriously think you could pull this off coming outta everything you said to get yourself elected in massachusetts?!]