Hate to say it, but Mitt & Ann are "Don Draper & Betty"

[SoCalDem]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/us/politics/16romney.html?pagewanted=all

They have "play-acted/reenacted" the 50's" for their whole lives.

This article from 2007 when he was running against McCain spells it out.

he's attractive like Don
he's super-secretive like Don
he's driven to succeed at any cost like Don
he demands complete fealty from his woman

she's Betty to a tee (except for the drinking)
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The Stay-at-Home Woman Travels Well

By JODI KANTOR
Published: December 16, 2007

MOUNT Pleasant, S.C.
Elise Amendola/Associated Press

TEAM ROMNEY Competition runs in the family, which holds a “Romlympics” each summer.

AT a recent shrimp dinner here for Republican women, Ann Romney seemed less like a campaign spouse trawling for votes than like visiting nobility. She was probably the wealthiest person in the room and, according to the crowd, the prettiest, too. “You are so beautiful!” one woman gushed. Another presented her with flowers. But when the visitor in the regal red jacket spoke, she turned out to be an informal, just-us-girls type. She introduced the House of Romney by whipping out poster-size photos of her five sons and 10 (now 11) grandchildren, and she confided how multiple sclerosis once left her unable to walk. She talked about the time a manicurist doing her nails back in Boston dissolved in tears of gratitude over an education program that her husband had introduced as governor of Massachusetts. So chatty was her approach, she never actually asked the audience for their votes. The crowd adored it. In explaining why, they listed the reasons that Mitt Romney has put his wife front and center in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination — in contrast to Rudolph Giuliani, whose politically inexperienced, thrice-married wife, Judith, has remained largely silent, and Mike Huckabee, whose wife, Janet, has only recently begun to campaign on her own. Mrs. Romney, 58, is young-looking but long-married, they noted. The word “classy” came up, as did the name Laura Bush.

snip

HER husband was running unsuccessfully for a United States Senate seat in Massachusetts in 1994, and Mrs. Romney was derided as superficial, pampered and too deferential to him. In a Boston Globe interview, she talked about slimming down to her high school weight (117 pounds), the investments she and Mr. Romney lived off as students, and the number of times the couple had ever argued: once.

snip


She spent the first decades of her marriage raising five sons. She taught 6 a.m. Mormon scripture classes five days a week for her sons and other children, and put sesame-seed chicken on the table for her boys at 5:30 p.m., hours before Mr. Romney returned home to Belmont, Mass., a suburb of Boston, from his work in consulting and then private equity. She even went to bed surrounded by her kids, who held searching late-night talks in their parents’ bedroom. Mr. Romney is so devoted to his wife, said Laraine Wright, an old friend, that when he had to spend a few days in another city for work, he would sometimes fly home at night, just so they could see each other. And once, when a Romney son insulted his mother, Mr. Romney sped home at midday to set him straight. The seeming perfection of the Romney’s union has led to some eye-rolling, but their claim of total harmony is a bit easier to understand in light of their religious beliefs. When Mormons wed, there’s no “till death do us part.” Couples are actually “sealed” in a ceremony meant to bond them for eternity. One result is that the church emphasizes perfecting, marriages — talking out problems, getting help. “It’s like constant marriage counseling,” said Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, a religion professor at the University of North Carolina.

snip

“A real education,” Mrs. Romney called it as she nestled last month, wearing jeans and pearls, on a couch in the Boston campaign office she decorated for her husband.

snip

Though she used steroids to combat her initial attack, today Mrs. Romney takes no medicine for her disease, instead relying on alternative therapies such as horseback riding — she calls it “joy therapy”— to keep herself well. But doctors say that only medication, which patients often resist because of unpleasant side effects, slows the long-term progress of the disease. In an interview, Mrs. Romney talked about her decision to forgo medication haltingly, even asking that this article not address it. “I would recommend no one to do what I did because it was such a leap of faith,” she said. She called the medicines effective, but added: “A lot of people get really sick from the drugs and they feel like they’re not helping them anyway. That was kind of my case.”

snip

During her rehabilitation from her initial attack, she took up dressage, going from a novice so weak that she could barely sit in the saddle to a winner of top amateur medals. She sometimes enters professional-level contests, against the advice of her trainer, Jan Ebeling. “She wants to measure herself against the best,” he said. Dressage is a sport of seven-figure horses and four-figure saddles. The monthly boarding costs are more than most people’s rent. Asked how many dressage horses she owns, Mrs. Romney laughed. “Mitt doesn’t even know the answer to that,” she said. “I’m not going to tell you!”

snip

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Oh I agree

I'm a fan of Mad Men.

Good call.

[madaboutharry]

2. Actually, Don is not Mitt.

I have watched every single episode of Mad Men and the truth is that Don Draper is aware of his own failings and he is also a closet liberal.

[SoCalDem]

3. Politics aside, Mitt is a Don-wannabee

Don is flawed and fights his demons, but we see him fall back time and again.. The hanging is a prime example.. It was in his power to help, but he chose not to..

Don is all about control.. his own and of others in his realm.

He runs the show and when push comes to shove, he decides what happens .

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. Don Draper grew up dirt poor...it's a major subtext of the show

Anyone who watches Mad Men and doesn't get the ways Don Draper's behavior is completely inflected by his upbringing as poor and rural is absolutely clueless. The whole of Draper's character revolves around that (class) conflict. He's a bounder, but deeply scarred by it, a Henry Sutpen for our time in that respect.

This is why Mitt can never be Don Draper. Mitt was never poor. Mitt doesn't have the slightest clue what privation feels like. Mitt doesn't give a shit about firing people because he doesn't know the anxiety of not being able to pay one's bills. Don Draper's entire character is built on this anxiety.

The analogy demonstrates a completely confused understanding of the character.

[madaboutharry]

5. +1

[SoCalDem]

6. I have watched every episode & I understand what drives Don

but that is Dick..not DON (the alterego)

Don is what he became..the all-powerful, but empty sham-man

THAT man is Mitt..

He could have hatched from an egg, and he would till be a sham