History books will record the 2012 Presidential election as having been decided on November 6, 2012.
While that may be factually accurate it is not, as Sally Field said in "The Absence Of Malice," true.
Mitt Romney lost this election more that 45 years ago when his father, Michigan Governor George Romney, appeared on the Lou Gordon Show and made one of the frankest political statements in American history--that military and diplomatic leaders waged a campaign of misinformation and deceit to justify the Vietnam War. Romney said they "brainwashed" him into believing that jungle quagmire was a good idea. The statement cost the elder Romney any chance of taking the White House.
Romney didn't mean a literal "Manchurian Candidate"-style brainwashing, it was a turn of phrase, and it probably would have been accepted as such if the idea behind it--they were lying to us about Vietnam--wasn't so far ahead of its time.
Nixon's secret plan to win peace with honor, absurd a notion as ever existed, was an easier sell to a nation that didn't want to believe American boys were sent to die on a lie and for no good purpose.
I believe the Mitt Romney who lost this election, a candidate with his own secret plan to cut taxes while balancing the budget, the man who changes his position on abortion like most people change socks, the titular head of a campaign that described itself as an Etch-A-Sketch, was created on that fateful Channel 50 soundstage in 1967.
The Mitt Romney who emerged as a political figure is a man with no core convictions, no deeply-held ideas about where this nation should go. He is an empty vessel that woke up every morning in his political career desperately wanting to say to that day's audience exactly what they wanted to hear.
If one were to wager to guess Mitt Romney's personal maxim, this would be a good guess: Just don't screw up and tell an unpleasant truth like the old man did.
If George Romney made the mistake of being inelegantly honest about a touchy subject, Mitt Romney's fatal flaw is he is--was--a public figure incapable of expressing anything resembling authenticity or intellectual integrity.
When Paul Ryan debated Joe Biden, Ryan came across as a man who believed that his vision would make for a better nation. Republicans and Democrats can understand Ryan's motivation for seeking public office, even if they disagree with his politics.
So far as anyone could tell, Mitt Romney wanted to be President of the United States of America for the same reason a high school student might want to be president of the foreign exchange club--the title looks good on a resume.
This shouldn't have been President Obama's election to lose given the state of the economy. However, he led the entire campaign, and the race only became close after the president's disastrous performance in the first debate.
Part of Obama's inherent advantage came from the unhinged radicalism of today's Republican Party. How many times did Roger Mourdock or Todd Akin or Deadbeat Joe Walsh or Michele Bachmann or Donald Trump or any number of embarrassingly prominent Republicans say something so stupid that it shamed their entire party? Too many to count.
Still, a strong presidential candidate could have overcome the nutters. In fact, a strong candidate could have swept the fringe out of view as though they were the proverbial redneck relations at a ritzy wedding.
Mitt Romney wasn't a strong candidate. He was weak-willed and inauthentic. 220 years of presidential elections have given us good candidates and bad candidates, but I can't think of one more pathetic, more hapless than Mitt Romney.
In the end, I don't know whether to pity him as a tragic human figure or be disgusted by the shell of a man that is Mitt Romney.
Either way, I'm just glad he won't be the president.
