Mitt Romney is an enigma.  On paper, he is slam-dunk.  He has a business record envied by the current capitalist system that America endorses (or at least, has endorsed for that last thirty years).  He is a faithful and devoted (single) family man.  He is a Christian (yes, Mormonism is a branch of Christianity).  Although he is richer than some countries, he eschews the rivaling ostentatiousness of the corporate elite (except for a few extra homes).  He is impeccably dressed and has hair ordained by God.  So the question is, why hasn’t he been able to put a lid on the campaign?  He has been at it for five years and should be choosing the color of the bow and practicing his acceptance speech.  But no; history, it appears, is having the last laugh (or a good teaser chuckle) and the prize he covets seems to be slipping, at least for the moment, from his twitching fingers.  

I, like everyone else, don’t have an answer, just an observation.  Mitt has become the epitome of the Teflon candidate in a way that trumps the typical issue gymnastics.  This new brand of Teflon permits Mitt to deftly claim different personas to catch the prevailing winds of politics.  Like Proteus, he can change shapes and can even deny his own history such as disavowing any knowledge of his actions as governor as he exhorts the American people to believe that he has the answers to our numbing problems.  The problem with this scenario is that he actually did Massachusetts good, particularly tackling the complex, divisive issue of health care.  Although the solution was not perfect, it did successively establish as basis to solve in a relevant and comprehensive way a problem that the rest of the country has shamelessly avoided. The other success story was the way he addressed the state’s deficits by making corporations be accountable for their accounts and pay what they legally owed.  In short, he at least tried to be a consensus builder and now as candidate, is willing to cast his record aside.  His disavowal of his record seems so complete it is as thought that Mitt never existed or has been dispatched Dexter style.  Was he really teary in his debate against Ted Kennedy or just faking it?  Was the illegal abortion in question really not so bad that he would allow the practice to proliferate under his new-found revulsion of Planned Parenthood?  His candidacy brings into question his integrity and the essential ingredient of every successful political leader (which is not the same as a corporate CEO) – possessing the confidence to humbly admit mistakes so that a stronger vision of leadership is continually reshape and improved.  With every flip, every flop, virtually every re-articulation of political stance, Mitt is demonstrating the nauseating disconnect between the leader he promises and the leader he is capable of being.

The tragedy of Mitt is that he comes across as something he is probably not – smug.  But his brand is of a different kind. It is not the type born from an unbridled ego infecting such characters as Dick Cheney, Darryl Issa or Grover Norquist, whose hubris deludes them into believing that the principles of the country should conform to their ideas alone.  Nor does Mitt possess the corrosive obnoxiousness of their personalities.  Mitt’s apparent smugness stems from a lack of courage that manifests itself in the cynical policy flip-flops that have come to define his political persona and is exacerbated every time he needs to test his own record with the quixotic and often irrational demands of party and its radical minority.  His conformity is confirmation of his lack of conviction and his lack of conviction is shielded by an obligatory self-righteousness.  His fear of failure will be his failure to lead effectively a diverse, conflicted nation..  His inability to shape a vision for himself is testimony that he will be unable to forge one for the rest of us.  Maybe Mitt is not as complacent as so many in the Republican Party; but he is complaisant.  The corporate CEO has become the political sycophant.  How then can he expect the American people to trust the voice of this mercurial mind? 

Now that Pujols will be taking his talents to the west coast, I was wondering if he could take some of his new found millions and give St. Louis back one of the great treasures that he helped steal from the city - KFUO, its award-winning classical music station.  While I am thinking of it, he can also take with him the vapid Christian rock station that replaced it.  That would be the perfect parting gift.

What a great description from Maureen Dowd yesterday about Newt Gingrich’s mind.  She wrote, it is “in love with itself.  It has persuaded itself that it is brilliant when it is merely promiscuous…to put it mildly, (he) is not a systematic thinker.  His mind is a jumble, an amateurish mess lacking impulse control.  He plays air guitar with ideas, producing air ideas.  He ejaculates concepts, notions and theories that are as inconsistent as his behavior.”  What eloquence, what perception!  And sadly, what truth.  Sad because the drivel he expends somehow, somewhere finds resonance in the American body, although I am at a loss as to which organ is responding.  Given Gingrich’s predilection for serial adultery, among other moral contradictions, it can’t be the heart of the right, religious or otherwise.  And certainly it cannot be the brain of the conservative American body because the most cursory of examination of his profundity betrays the pundit to be a pud, a hypocrite whose “brilliance” is a consistent repackaging of worn, failed and accessible political platitudes.  His ideas shimmer with all the expectation and accuracy of a Cialis ad, and his solutions to this country’s myriad problems, as epitomized by his newly revealed cliché of a slogan, consciously reminiscent of Reagan’s Morning in America – “working together we can rebuild the America we love” – is as vacuous as the notion that all a relationship needs to be happy and healthy is a pill.  While sadly this thought might reflect the America we have witness these past 30+ years, now we need and should demand more, especially since this is not the America of 1984.  It is no longer morning but the twilight of that long, withering day that broke thirty years ago that permitted Newt and his gang to promiscuously vilify government and bully the American people all the while taking full advantage of the incest between the public and private sectors and inoculate themselves from their own failures.  The question I would like to ask Newt is two-fold; to what version of America are you referring and if it is Newt’s America 1.0, why in the world would we want to suffer Newt’s America 2.0? 

America needs to do its homework.  Gingrich’s elasticity does not reflect a character of strength and vision but an electoral process that is rotting before our eyes and It is time that we revoke the candidates’ license to spew before decomposition becomes systemic.  It is time to hold them and most importantly, what they champion and promise accountable.  Gingrich is a loser who envisions himself a Messiah.  We neither can expect nor do we need a Messiah but at least we can ask for a candidate who is bold enough to offer to the American people a vision that doesn’t revolve around him.