A Washington Post article today about the annual Romney family vacation on Lake Winnipesaukee is as good of evidence as any of what a waking nightmare a Romney presidency would be. As with the sad tale of Seamus, this vignette comes from a friendly source and presumably was meant to humanize Mitt-bot 4.0 [note- italics not in actual article]:
The Romneys, 30 in all these days, spend their time away from the stresses of everyday life — like, say, wrapping up the Republican nomination for president — by following a highly orchestrated, highly competitive regimen of sports and games known as the “Romney Olympics.”
The Romney Olympics have long included a mini-triathlon of biking, swimming and running that pits Mitt and his five sons and their wives against one another. But after Mitt once nearly finished last, behind a daughter-in-law who had given birth to her second child a couple of months earlier, the ultra-competitive and self-described unathletic patriarch expanded the games to give himself a better shot.
Now they also compete to see who can hang onto a pole the longest, who can throw a football the farthest and who can hammer the most nails into a board in two minutes
Last winter in Iowa, Romney campaigned at a diner with his youngest son, Craig, who shared an anecdote from the Romney Olympics as an example of his father’s competitiveness.
Although Craig’s wife, Mary, had just given birth, she competed anyway in the triathlon.
“All the boys had finished at that point, and it was down to my wife and my dad,” Craig said.
“I tripped her!” Mitt quipped, joking.
“In the home stretch,” Craig recalled, “she had a slight lead on him and . . . he was going to win that race or he was going to die trying. And you see this fight to the finish. He went for this, he gave it everything he had, he gave it a good kick and he beat her in the end.”
Craig said his dad was so fatigued that “he passed out in the lawn chair, and we didn’t see him the rest of the day.”
“You know,” Mitt added, “there’s more to that. I changed the nature of the triathlon after that. I didn’t like this idea that these were only swimming, biking and running.”
Now, he said, “we have log-sawing, nail-hammering. We added some things I excel at so I don’t come in last every year.”
After one of Romney’s sons, who had just passed a kidney stone the size of a golf ball, almost beat him at pole-hanging, Romney introduced the events of out-sourcing, bucket-tossing, and waffle-making (his “trump-card”).
Obviously (?) that last part in italics is made up, but the rest appears to be horrifyingly horrifyingly real. It continues:
At night, the adults gather for family meetings, with each evening focused on a frank and full discussion of a different son’s career moves and parenting worries.
Each member of the family picks a daily chore from a “chore wheel,” so as to share cleaning tasks evenly.
One summer when Romney’s eldest son, Tagg, now 42, was working for the Los Angeles Dodgers, he told his father he wouldn’t make it to Wolfeboro. Baseball, after all, is a summer sport, and he didn’t think he could take a week off in the middle of the season.
“My dad said, ‘No, you will make it,’ ” Tagg recalled in an interview. So he showed up, noting, “I had to beg forgiveness from my bosses at the Dodgers.”
The 13 acres and 768 ft of shoreline on the property & the surronding town of Wolfeboro sound bucolically lovely, vacationing there should be a wonderful time. But, does not the forced march Mitt Romney version of a family vacation sound more like some crazy reality show than an enjoyable get away with loved ones? The “stresses of everyday life” sound potentially preferable of the stresses of worrying that angry Mitt will emerge and come up with some cockamamie thing for you to compete with him in, if you come too close to beating him at nail hammering. The poor Romneys must need a two week vacation to recover from the exhaustion of a week at the lake with crazed camp director Papa Mitt.
The problem with Romney as a potential President that the Seamus on the roof thing shows is not simply possible cruelty to an animal, it was that it highlighted a hyper focus careening into myopia that prevented him from recognizing not only when something was not working, but even when it had gone really really wrong. This is a not a good quality in a President to say the least. It seemed like a similar thing happened around the South Carolina primary with Romney’s slowness to recognize a real issue with his his tax returns. In that situation, his competition was weak enough he could recover, but a similar failure to recognize a changing situation on the global stage could be catastrophic.
The problem with Camp Romney is not that it reveals Mitt to be some extra-square throw-back patriarch, it’s that it illustrates the fact that Mitt Romney is such a controlling, competitive, must always win person that he would even subject his whole family a totally bizarre “vacation” week of his own hyper-controlled design (and whose design he will change at any time to his advantage). Romney’s me-first, and hyper controlling nature have long been evident and are often not even hidden. These are also extremely negative qualities for a President. It’s bad enough that 30 people have to endure Romney’s version of vacation, let’s hope and pray 300,000,000 people don’t have to endure Romney’s version of America.
If people are able, they should consider volunteering in New Hampshire for Obama. The polls there are tied and that state could make a huge difference one way or the other.
That is horrifyingly horrifying? You seem to be very easily horrified.
While I think the Seamus thing is quite funny, I don’t find it particularly horrifying either– it has never seemed much different to me than putting the dog in the open bed of a pickup truck
If Mitt were just some random guy, this would be more on the head-shaking funny side. But, this hyper-competitive control-freak as leader of the free world? Yes, it is quite scary.
And putting a dog in the back of a pick up truck is one thing, putting one there for an 11 hour ride is another. But, keeping your dog there after it has shit all over itself from the experience is legit disturbing.
Oh right, Clinton killed his dog, Buddy. That’s right, he couldn’t train the easiest breed, a lab, and it ran away and got killed. Then we have Obama, who describes in his book just how succulent dog meat can really be. Now if I were a dog, which family would I rather live with????????
what Romney did or does because a Democrat has done it. The fact that you don’t understand that Clinton is a red herring is just another example of your vacuity.
Do not make a satisfying dish. They make two red herrings.
Fer crissakes, it is Mitt Romney. He feeds you ammunition EVERY SECOND!
When you go with pure, utter nonsense such as this, it really kind of makes it seem like you got nothin’– Admiral Stockddale style.
comment I addressed specifically to you. Scout has a better follow up.
If Mitt Romney feeds us ammunition every second, then this story, which is part of an emerging larger portrait, is, by definition, not a red herring: “a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue.” Dan’s comment is a red herring does exactly that. Moreover, it’s a common rhetorical move by conservatives, one I don’t even think they notice.
If we have to put up with the differently-winged (e.g. Dan), it would be nice if we didn’t have to put up with stupid thinking/rhetoric.
Sheesh. Hyper-competitive families do hyper-competitive things, and encourage children to compete with each other. And this is different from Joe Kennedy’s treatment of his kids, and their treatment of theirs… how, exactly? In any event: not very scary, unless one is very, very easily frightened.
were what first came to mind when reading this post. And that hyper-competitiveness wasn’t all good. I was reading Garry Wills on RFK’s relationship with Johnson. Life might have been better and the country might have accomplished more if Bobby hadn’t been such a prick. LBJ was no great shakes as a person, but Bobby outpricked him after JFK was assassinated.
Romney doesn’t scare me, nor does learning this, but it does help see his character. One anecdote is dismissable, but the accumulation tell us something unpleasant about Romney’s character.
If anyone writes the book, they can have my title, “Portrait of an A$$hole as a Fun Man.”
Yeah, as I think about, this would fit in with a hyper-competitive family I know. However, in that family, they developed an ability to accept defeat gracefully. Mitt Romney does not seem capable of that. Tripping women to win events, even in a hyper-competitive family, would seem to class one among the jerks.
You may have misread this. The crux of the story is about Romney himself, a grandfather, fairly crazily competing with his grown son’s and their wives. In particular, it’s about the Presidential candidate competing with a presumably grown daughter-in-law, who just had just gave birth to her second kid, and who caused Mitt to make up new “Romney Olympics” events he thought he would have an advantage at like pole-hanging, nail-hammering, football-throwing, and log-sawing just because she almost beat him in a foot race. You really do not think this is bizarre and troubling for a would-be President?
I don’t know what Joe Kennedy has to do with this (btw, I would want to see him as president either). But, while he was a famously competitive guy, for all his faults I just can’t see him digging deep down to beat Jackie O in a footrace just after she had given birth to John-John, or any time- much less changing the rules in future years by instituting ridiculous family competitions like “pole-hanging” and “nail-hammering” to help ensure his continued victories. And even if somehow he did, he (and his sons) would certainly not be so clueless and tone-deaf as to tell stories about such weirdness in puff-piece vacation profile in the Washington Post in the middle of an election. The craziest thing is that Romney actually thought this would make him look good!
Like Obama and hit the links all day golfing, instead of spending time with the family.
Like the Tim Tebow haters, this article lashes out at the goodness of an individual. The problem with people like Tebow and Romney is they remind us of ours shortcomings, our failures, or worse, our parents disappointment in us. Neither Tebow or Romney need to say a word, it is all about how they conduct themselves that drives people to foam at the mouth.
Trolls will never stop trolling, no matter what anyone says. So what? Is this a symposium on human nature in general or an evaluation of the candidates?
But, to your non-point- we can be reasonably certain that if Tim Tebow ever were to have a daughter-in-law, he would not feel so threatened by the notion of losing to her in a silly vacation game that he would run himself to exhaustion to beat her and then need to impose new rules to boost his chances at “victory” in the future. In fact, Mr. Tebow, good Christian that he is, would strike one as far more likely to strive for games a daughters-in-law would actually enjoy and everyone could compete…especially if he had just been given the gift of a grandchild by this daughter-in-law. Gaming the system to boost yourself at the expense of others (family no less, in this particular case) is a distinctly unchristian act.
…there are better, more relevant reasons to not vote for Romney than this. Would you prefer he take a poll to determine how to spend his vacation the way Clinton did?
This was in the news today, and it strikes me as interesting and telling. Is Romney running against Clinton? Besides, while polling where to vacation is certainly nothing to brag about, as an interpersonal matter, orchestrating an annual week-long bizzare forced-march style mandatory “vacation” for your 30 closest relatives is a much more extreme act.
Anyway, look forward to your post sharing the approved reasons not to vote for Romney!
I’d call the cops on these people.
Mitt’s got them competing for some kind of superman contest their whole lives. It isn’t just on these vacations, but their whole life is their entry in Dad’s insane olympics. That pressure is surely what made Tagg and his wife to go against LDS teaching to hire surrogates to carry their last two children, because having only one or two would have been a supreme embarrassment and failure. It’s like he said “No, you will have five children” to him, so he had to beg forgiveness from the LDS church rather than fail to have a big family like his perfect Dad.
Carville’s words worth repeating: “IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!”
It’s not about summer vacation activities, dogs, or even health care (people have decided on that already)…it’s about JOBS and the direction of the ECONOMY. That’s it. It’s not about religion (if Obama could get by Rev. Wright, Mormonism will be a piece of cake for Romney), or race or wives…it’s about JOBS and the ECONOMY. That’s it. Americans want JOBS and a healthy ECONOMY and they would vote for a dog abusing, atheist with three wives if they thought that candidate could turn the ECONOMY around…so stick to the issue…there is only ONE: It’s the economy!
Shocked this article got through the screening process. Patently absurd article.
As far as I know, neither of them is for more unemployment or a slow contracting economy, so I don’t have anyone to vote for. I have to pick one based on other issues. I submit the same is true of people who want more jobs and a growing economy.
This election is a choice between two people, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. I agree that, barring an unforeseen event, the economy will be the dominant issue. “It’s the economy, stupid” was a great tool to keep the ’92 Clinton campaign focused, but they certainly did not pass up opportunities to make Bush look bad when they had them- whether it was as old, detached and out of touch (amazement at supermarket scanner, looking at watch) or as a promise breaker (“read my lips”)- and it would have been political malpractice if they ignored these things and only talked, literally, about the economy.
Finally, when obvious repub trolls are seconding the notion that people should NOT talk about Romney genuinely weird and troubling personality characteristics, people who do want a dem win may want to give a second thought to that strategy.
To low information voters, though, it is most assuredly about personality. Have you never talked to any low information voters? You know, people who can’t find Burma on a map and who don’t know who Paul Ryan is. Ones I’ve talked with who’ve watched a lot of TV spend a lot of time pondering the personalities of the people they see on TV. What they definitely do not wonder about is whether austerity or stimulus is the best cure, but they can tell you a lot about tone of voice. And if you tell them a memorable story, that can decide their vote.
Change the name to Kennedy and you would be gushing about your memories of Jackie playing football and Teddy running for a pass on the “Compound”. Tripping a woman wouldn’t come close to the shocking things the Kennedys did.
But, “that’s different”… I understand.
The hyper-competitiveness of the Kennedys is remarkably at odds with their politics. The Kennedys campaigned by selling us their values.
Romney by contrast is trying to sell us his performance as a competitor. If that turns up looking ugly, we Democrats can trip him.
None of this nanny state dog on the roof of a car to Canada stuff–we don’t have room on my car roof for a dog or for a crate for that matter, so instead we strapped a toddler seat and belted in a cat! The best part! When I run for office I know all my compadres will hang out on the web waiting to give me love and fend off unfair partisan attacks and they will proclaim that this was a good and fine thing, a veritable boon to cats, a gift of fresh air!
It’s true, if I were presented with a picture of Mitt Romney making pancakes for his wife and kids and feeding his dog biscuits, I might be inconsistent and suggest that I actually cared about policy and issues and stuff like that. And even if Mitt Romney did not resort to tripping a daughter-in-law to win, I would still want to know why he now opposes his own health care plan and why he supports Bush tax cuts.
Really, don’t just answer to continue to conversation. Would you ever be voting for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama? The dog, the money, MA healthcare… none of it matters since you would move on to the next thing about Romney which you’d not like.
Romney had a big hand in making the Commonwealth Connector happen. He was instrumental in designing it and getting it passed. Are you happy he did this? Are you going to give me any credit for it? Sounds like the kind of thing liberals would be ecstatic over. Now Obama has taken Mitt’s model and not interpolated, but extrapolated ObamaCare. Does anyone see the difference? Sort of like a suit made just for you by a tailor vs. a suit given to everyone in your company and expecting it to fit each employee, regardless of their height, weight and girth.
As for the Obama/Bush tax cuts, I do hope President Romney lets them ALL expire… as MSNBC says “shared sacrifice”. BUT, if the Democrats want them to be extended, I hope we’ll have “shared cuts”. There will not be a cut for higher income earners with no cuts to lower and thank God we have a Republican House to not let that happen.
Sometimes the exchanges here help other voters make up their mind. That’s one reason to keep them civil, I think. When we write, we write for a larger audience than just the parties to the conversation — most blogs like this have in excess of one hundred readers for every writer. In that spirit, can we please refer to it as “the ACA” or “the Affordable Care Act”? If I can resist the temptation to talk about “the Mittster” or embrace similarly partisan vocabulary, sure you can as well. I don’t find it THAT hard to convey my political opinions in respectful language.
The “free market” model of health insurance has failed miserably. The US has the most expensive health care system in the world, and that expensive system lags virtually EVERY first-world nation in outcomes. We pay for a new Cadillac and drive an old Fiat.
The ACA is a giveaway to the private insurance industry. I strongly encourage you and the GOP to count your blessings and quit while you’re ahead — the alternative to the ACA will be government-sponsored single-payer health care (like that offered by most other first-world nations) and that model does away with private health insurers altogether.
The ACA is already so Republican that the main reason to oppose it is purely spite — hence the “ObamaCare” drivel. One does wonder, again, just what drives the personal animus against Barack Obama. It certainly creates the impression that the GOP is eager to impose virtually ANY harm to America rather than admit that President Obama got one right.
I have also tried to be civil with the discord here. As for names, I have tried but far too many people here cannot stand calling President Bush simply Bush, or Senator Brown “Browny” and other names, Romney is “Willard”…, so I call President Obama… Obama, ACA is ObamaCare…
Please try to understand that we Republicans are not “Oil Barrons”, we are not private insurance executives… we are just people who believe in doing things differently than you do. Many will try to demonize us and cruel heartless rich people, but we aren’t. The left often refers to GOP as the 1%ers, which first of all is wrong since there’s a ton of rich Democrats in the US. Plus, they called 1%ers because they are the top 1% of the wealth in the US so logically speaking there is a bunch of GOPers making less money. The red states of the US are full of poor Republicans.
So rather than looking for the boogie man behind any Conservative movement, try to understand that we simply think about things differently. And for sure our party includes crazies, and lots of them. And crazy for differing reasons. Just like your side has crazies.
We don’t count our blessings concerning single-payer, we would have elected more Senators and repealed it. You not he other hand should be thankful that you squeezed ACA through by a sinlge vote without the chance for even the House and Senate to have a Compromise Bill since it would never have passed. The country still dislikes ACA more than they like it. Please don’t bother showing me a poll of people liking it more, I don’t believe these polls, I believe voters.)
We don’t object to ACA for spite, we don’t like it. I don’t get a directive from the GOP leadership, I don’t like it. For sure there are movements of objecting to things to make the POTUS look bad, but I will not support movements like that. I want what’s best for the country, according to my ideology. I’m against illegal immigration because “I” am against it, not because Mitch has told me to be against it.
just trying to help.
Your welcome.
nt
The problem is that he seems very reluctant to take it. As for sacrafice, the lower orders have done enough so time for sacrafice from the rich. With regard to expiring tax cuts the question is do you prioritize deficit reduction or economic stimulus. If the former, let them all expire; if the latter only let them expire for the wealthy. As an unapologetic New Dealer I go for the latter.
Even if it’s not all about me and my vitally important vote (which I’m wisely told probably wouldn’t go to Romney), there is a bigger issue here–which version of Romney never tells the truth about anything ,and how can anyone tell?
When Romney believed that human action caused global warming and supported a mandate or tax or whatever he called it to move toward universal health care was he making all that up so that he could market himself in Massachusetts and get the credential he would need to run for President? Or, on the the other hand, when he now calls for repealing Romney or Obamacare or whatever he calls the Affordable Care Act and says we can’t tell if global warming is caused by human action is he now telling the truth, or is he making it all up, to appeal to a Republican base? If you are a Republican how can you tell? All humans and politicians in particular are know for shifting their opinions, but no one in recent memory has come remotely close to Mitt.
Obamacare… I think Romney wants to repeal it and replace it with something that works better. Certainly this is a great goal for any POTUS who comes in. I hope he does the same for our tax system, Defense system, Educational system… AS for speaking with fork tongue… I’ll repeat that what’s good for MA may not be good for Texas. Each state has individual needs and requirements and ons-size-fits-all almost never works good for anyone.
I hope he embraces RomneyCare and explains the benefits. I hope he explains how he got political support in MA for it and it was voted in by a large majority (House passed RomneyCare 154-2). Romney vetoed 8 sections which were all overridden by the Beacon Hill. He should recommend this plan to states and see how they vote on it.
Things should be as simple as possible, but not more so.
Instead of tossing about words like “ObamaCare” and “RomneyCare”, please share what specifics of Mitt Romney’s plan (is there one?) that you think will work better than the ACA.
Deval Patrick’s role in making this work in the “real world”, Mitt was already on the road trashing Massachusetts when health reform started in the state. It seems that Mitt’s estimates (like a lot of his numbers) were a bit off, estimated premiums on paper and in the real world were vastly different, when we got the insurance estimates they were nearly double what Mitt told us. Patrick had to come in and negotiate to make insurance affordable, something that IMO Mitt didn’t really care about, he just thought passing the legislation would be part of his platform running for president. Karma is a bitch huh? Trivializing Trav and DiMasi is john’s comments are a sham too, they were invested in making this happen as well, but it wasn’t because they were running for another office, but instead thought it was the best thing to do for the commonwealth.
Also, I’m sorry, but the argument that a person’s health is different by the state they live in is just plain dumb, I’m not going to even debate that.
Have a good discussion Johnk, don’t try to bullshit. We have many differing systems (RMV, taxes, banking, state laws..) from state to state but we all use the same currency, eat similar foods. We can have a different health insurance system from state to state too. Be an adult here.
I agree with Mitt’s errors on predicting costs, just like I think ACA is going to bankrupt our country due to similar prediction errors. Just like the CBO and others miss so many cost predictions (Big Dig predictions $2B become $16B).
That error rate is exactly one of the reasons I’m against ACA.
AND insure people then they should be able to do so, then yes, I agree with you. But I think that’s already in the ACA. No? There is an opt-out, but it’s out a few years, Republican’s complaint that if states are required to roll out a plan, then it would be almost impossible to change it and roll out a different plan a few years later. Again, “real world”, I am inclined to mostly agree with that.
I want to check, that I think there is movement on bringing the date so states can implement their plans.
But a lot of your points are misleading, the point I made about Romney are accurate and Patrick’s role.
“bringing in the date”
Directly from the White House, Obama’s statement on bringing in the date from 2017 to 2014. Obama wants it to happen.
Now this part is interesting:
Scott Brown?
I knew this rang a bell, it’s back in the news due to the SCOTUS, Obama’s position from 2011 is back in the news, HuffPost had this on Scott Brown:
Hey, Scott? Where are you?
— What do you think John? Agree with Obama? Plus, shouldn’t we turn the screws on Brown and not let him run and hide.
has yet to tell us what the new, improved RomneyCare is, since it isn’t MassHealth.
Please, what does he propose? In fact, what do any of the republicans propose beyond repeal, repeal, repeal? 2 years ago every republican in congress was saying start over, use a clean sheet of paper, begin again… well what do they propose John?
…is to Romney what brush-clearing was to W.