[Vision2020] Gadding of a Gawky Gowk

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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July 31, 2012
Gadding of a Gawky Gowk By MAUREEN
DOWD<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/maureendowd/index.html>

WASHINGTON

Remember when Janice Soprano shot her fiance to death after he punched her
in the mouth? Then she calls Tony to come over and help her. He mops up the
blood and has his thugs chop up the body.

“All in all, though,” Tony tells his sister sincerely, as he drops her at
the bus station, “it was a pretty good visit.”

By Sopranos standards, all in all, Mitt Romney had a pretty good visit
overseas. But by political standards, it was more like Munch’s “The
Scream.”

When Barack Obama went abroad in July 2008, searching for some foreign
policy cred, European leaders smothered him with love and respect.

More than 200,000 Germans thronged to the Victory Column in Berlin, hailing
him as “Redeemer” and “Savior.” In a joint press conference in Paris, a
smitten Nicolas Sarkozy was so touchy-feely that even Obama looked a little
embarrassed.

“You must want a cigarette after that,” I teased Obama on the plane to
London later.

Poor Mitt Romney had no such magic carpet ride. He insulted the British and
infuriated the Palestinians while pandering to the Israelis and American
Jewish voters, including donors like the Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon
Adelson who tagged along.

Egged on by some of the same neocon advisers who brought us the Iraq
pre-emptive invasion, Romney offered “Go ahead, make my day” diplomacy,
signaling he would support Israeli action to pre-emptively strike Iran’s
nuclear facilities.

In an inadvertently hilarious grand finale in Warsaw, where Romney was
pandering to American Catholics by dropping Pope John Paul II’s name every
chance he got, his spokesman insulted the traveling press clamoring for a
rare dollop of attention from the Republican contender.

Obama gave four press conferences and plenty of individual interviews when
he went abroad as a candidate. But when reporters traveling with Romney
mutinied as Mitt left a wreath-laying at a war memorial in Pilsudski
Square, pressing on the gaffes and on why they were being shut out,
campaign spokesman Rick Gorka shot back crudely that the press should kiss
a part of his anatomy, noting incongruously: “This is a holy site for the
Polish people. Show some respect.”

Indeed.

The true measure of how inglorious the trip was? Senior Romney strategist
Stuart Stevens assured the press how glorious the trip was.

He took the cascade of chuckleheaded moments and tried to plant the crazy
idea in our brains that they were a mark of Romney’s steadfast character.

“He has a tendency to speak his mind and to say what he believes,” Stevens
said, “and whenever you do that, there will be those that disagree with
you, and there will be those that agree with you.”

Romney himself tried the same silly spin with ABC News, telling David Muir
when asked about the damaging headlines: “You know, I tend to tell people
what I actually believe, and referring to the comments that were made in
the media is something which I felt was an honest reflection of what was
being concerned, or what was concerning folks.”

That quote is alarming on two levels: First, Romney never seems to say what
he actually believes, and, second, he doesn’t seem to actually speak
English.

Mitt’s foray showed some new colors, as he intended, but they were not
flattering ones. We now know how little he knows about the world, how
really slow on his feet he is, what meager social and political agility he
has.

Wherever he went, whatever situation he was in, he remained frozen in
himself. It was reminiscent of the stinging review of an Oscar Wilde
lecture by Ambrose Bierce, who wrote that Wilde was a “gawky gowk” who
“wanders about posing as a statue of himself.”

The odd odyssey underscored Mitt’s off-putting mix of opacity and
insularity. Weren’t American elites once more worldly, like the Kennedys
and the Harrimans? Romney was in the forefront of a revolution in American
finance, he was the governor of an important state and he was an elder in
the Mormon Church. But that’s all the stuff he doesn’t want to talk about,
so we’re left with a narrow spokesmodel, banally handsome with an empty
look; not like President Obama and Bill Clinton, where you always see the
brain whirring behind the eyes.

Barack Obama created a character called Barack Obama, a remote, superior
sort who comes down from the mountaintop during campaigns to assure us that
he’s just like us.

Romney is not on the mountaintop. He’s here, mingling among us, present but
absent. A fence wrapped around a wall.

Stuart Stevens is right when he says it’s easy to imagine Romney in the
White House. I can visualize him right now, lapidary and frozen, in the
Rose Garden. A statue of himself.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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