I used to write a lot of posts for this blog. In 2007 and 2008, I wrote frequently about the presidential race, and talked at least peripherally about Mitt Romney. I look back on that time and remember that most of the readers of my blog were co-workers in a company that raised money for political candidates and non-profit organizations. Because we worked in an industry that concerned itself with public affairs, we debated the issues in the workplace. In fact, more often than not, I wrote a blog post because someone asked me to, wondering what my thoughts were on this candidate or that idea.
Four years later, that company is out of business, dragged down in large part by an economy where people just don’t have money to donate to worthwhile causes. The people with whom I used to argue and debate, and the group of people at work who looked forward to reading my latest skewering of George W. Bush, have scattered across the country. Some still work in fundraising, some have disappeared, and most of the employees of that company took whatever job they could get.
All of this has happened during the administration of President Barack Obama, who took office with high expectations. Whether you support him or not, I think it is fair to say that for a variety of reasons, he has not met those expectations. As a result, he is in danger of losing his bid for re-election to Governor Romney, who I have not been kind to in previous posts on this blog.
In 2008, I chronicled in detail Romney’s history of flip-flopping, of saying whatever he thought you wanted to hear if it meant he could win your vote, of being so sleazy and transparently false that he was openly despised by the other Republican candidates for president. That’s who he was in 2008, and that’s who he is now. He explicitly denies doing or saying things that he has in fact done, things that are documented fact, things that there of video of him doing and saying.
But I did not write this post just to restate my previous complaints about Governor Romney. I wrote it because, at this moment, I feel as if he is going to win this election, and I am trying to contemplate what that would mean for this country. The president could certainly still win this race, and I have always cautioned people who ask me to predict election outcomes that a week is a lifetime in politics, and we have ten of them left until Election Day. But at the moment, regardless of the polls that narrowly favor Obama, I think Romney has the advantage, and here’s why:
Polling is an inexact science. There’s a margin of error built into every one of them. Still, the average of national polls and those in key battleground states has shown a narrow lead for the president. Unfortunately, there is very little correlation between a poll taken in August and an election in November, because you’re polling registered voters, not likely voters. You can’t accurately determine who is likely to vote in an election until much closer to that election, so you’re stuck with these polls of registered voters. And this is a problem because there are more registered Democrats than registered Republicans. In other words, the sample of the polls is skewed towards Obama. This means if he’s up by two in a poll of registered voters, he’s just as likely to be down by three or more when it gets close enough to the election to figure out who’s actually going to vote. The president is in this tenuous polling position after a summer of outspending Romney and hammering him through television advertising that sought to define Romney before he could define himself.
The Obama campaign tried to make Mitt unacceptable to the American people before the fall campaign even began, and they failed. Now, as people wind down the summer, settle into work and school, and pay closer attention to this election, Romney is going to have a decided financial advantage. Obama is the incumbent, he will have the debates as an opportunity to win votes, and Romney is a mistake prone candidate, so the president has a puncher’s chance. Looking at his numbers, he could scratch through to re-election, or he could lose fairly decisively. I think we’re going to see one of two prior elections unfold here: either Obama crawls to a narrow win like incumbent George W. Bush in 2004, or it will be like 1980, when a close race between President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan broke for Reagan late in a big way. Which one will happen? I don’t know. But let’s pretend for a moment that it’s like 1980 and in January of 2013, this nation prepares to see Mitt Romney take the oath of office as the 45th President of the United States.
People are already speculating how Romney would be as president, but that’s not my question. What I want to know is, who would Romney be as president? He’s already been a guy who claimed to be to the left of Ted Kennedy on some issues (when he was running against Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts). He’s already been a “severely conservative” politician (his words) who has made every effort in policy and demeanor to get the Tea Party to warm up to him. And he has been a commonsense, moderate Republican governor who reached across party lines to govern sensibly with Democrats.
Who will he be? I don’t know, and that’s what worries me.
In a way, Romney reminds me of Al Gore. A smart guy, a talented politician, but stiff and awkward and frequently inauthentic. They are both the sons of successful politicians. Both Albert Gore, Sr. and George Romney aspired to the presidency, and both men’s sons have wanted to fulfill the ambition of their late fathers. I always thought that if Al Gore had actually become president, he would have finally loosened up. Freed of the burden of his father’s ambitions and of the chase, he would settle into the office, do the job, and do it well. Maybe that’s what Romney would do. I hope so.
Unfortunately, this prospective president has shown himself to be so malleable, I think what we can expect from Mitt Romney depends on the political circumstances at the time. If he had a Democratic Congress like George H.W. Bush did, we could reasonably expect a solid middle of the road presidency based on a re-run of his time as Massachusetts governor. But he’s not going to have that. If he’s elected, he’ll have at least a Republican House of Representatives. A Democratic Senate would probably frustrate whatever legislative ambitions President Romney would have, and I find it amazing that I still have no idea what those ambitions would really be.
If we end up with President Romney and a Republican controlled House and Senate, we would arrive at a very dangerous point in American history. I’m not one to routinely demonize the other side. I poke, I prod, I belittle, but there’s nothing about being a Republican that I find sinister. But this isn’t the Republican Party of George Romney, or even Ronald Reagan. I can live with a genuine conservative. That’s fine. But we need a president who will guard us against the impulses and radical ideas of the wingnuts of the far right, and I don’t know if I can trust Mitt Romney to do that. I know Barack Obama will. In this political climate, in this economic reality, that is a depressing reason to choose one candidate over another, especially when one of them seemed so promising. But that’s why I can’t consider voting for Romney. Barack Obama disappointed me, but I still believe that he will be a responsible, principled president in his second term, whether he can get anything done or not. I think Romney might be the same way, but given the crowd of loonies behind him, and given his long history of changing his identity more often than a person in the witness protection program, I just can’t take that risk. And I hope that in the end, the American people see things the same way.
