The Newsweek essay that exposes Mitt as as gutless wonder: "The Wimp Factor"

[pnwmom]

The whole article is well worth reading. Here are a few snippets.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/07/29/michael-tomasky-a-candidate-with-a-serious-wimp-problem.html

Dodging reports, fearing his base, hiding his taxes—is Mitt Romney just too insecure to be president? In Newsweek, Michael Tomasky surves a history of presidential manliness and asks just where Mitt would fit amid the studly swagger of Dubya and Reagan.

SNIP

And what kind of presidential candidate whines about a few attacks and demands an apology when the going starts to get rough? And tries to sound tough by accusing the president who killed the world’s most-wanted villain of appeasement? That’s what they call overcompensation, and it’s a dead giveaway; it’s the “tell.” This guy is nervous—terrified—about looking weak. And ironically, being terrified of looking weak makes him look weaker still.

SNIP

Compounding matters, when pressed to the slightest degree about his inconsistencies, he can get nasty and whiny. No one talks anymore about his encounter with Bret Baier of Fox News last December, but it was a Moment. When Baier had the nerve to challenge him on his health-care and immigration views, Romney complained—told Baier his questions were “uncalled for!” Of course it was Fox, which is supposed to be his on-air public-relations firm, so Romney was shocked. But even so, you don’t say it. A politician complaining about a journalist just doing his job is ... weenie-ish.


SNIP

Romney will go at Obama hard until the election on Pentagon cuts and security leaks and Obama’s alleged apologies for America. Here and there he’ll score a point. But here, too, he’s just trying too hard. You watch something like his recent VFW speech, and you see that he so desperately wants people to see him and think: “He’s like Reagan.” Please. You would no more cast Romney as Reagan than you would Pee-wee Herman as James Bond.

SNIP

[speedoo]

1. good summary snippet:

SNIP

The episode highlights what’s really wrong with Romney. He’s kind of lame, and he’s really ... annoying. He keeps saying these ... things, these incredibly off-key things. Then he apologizes immediately—with all the sincerity of a hostage. Or maybe he doesn’t: sometimes he whines about the subsequent attacks on him. But the one thing he never does? Man up, double down, take his lumps.

[pnwmom]

2. Thanks. Practically every paragraph in there is worth quoting. I especially like the one

where he makes an analogy putting Romney and PeeWee Herman in the same category.

[gasser85]

5. Too funny

"All the sincerity of a hostage". Ok I wet myself a little with that line.

[calimary]

7. Welcome to DU!

This was AWESOME:

“He’s like Reagan.” Please. You would no more cast Romney as Reagan than you would Pee-wee Herman as James Bond.

Excruciatingly delicious! Now doesn't that just sound Presidential as all-get-out?



Let's all remember, too, the GOP fancies itself as the he-man, macho, stern-father (as opposed to nurturing-mother) party. They're the ones who rattle sabers all the time, and talk tough and swagger around and bluster and make like John Wayne. WE'RE the ones who've got foreign policy! WE'RE the tough-guy party! So how come OUR guy is the guy who got bin Laden? And just a few years after their LAST loudmouth, phony-cowboy swaggerin' "tough-guy" failed completely on that score. Too busy was he, leading our country into two dead-end wars, after all.

This is a nasty thing to have following you around when you're campaigning to be the New-and-Improved Mr. America and you're already famous for being a cold fish and wooden as hell. That's not good to have dragging behind you as you try to convince people you deserve their vote for President. Image counts. A LOT. You don't want to have the words "weenie," "lame," "he whines," "nervous - terrified about looking weak," "weaker," attached to you or used to describe you, not to mention your being compared to Pee-wee Herman, forcryingoutloud!

This is pretty horrible, too:

And speaking of Ann—did you notice that she was the one driving the Jet Ski on their recent vacation, while Mitt rode on the back, hanging on, as Paul Begala put it to me last week, “like a helpless papoose”?

"Helpless papoose"? Oh. My. God.

Hey teabaggers - you ready to vote for Pee-wee Herman, your "helpless papoose," for President? Post-modern "macho" I guess. That's the best the GOP can do. Pity.

[MADem]

3. My favorite bits had to do with the GHWB comparisons

The episode highlights what’s really wrong with Romney. He’s kind of lame, and he’s really ... annoying. He keeps saying these ... things, these incredibly off-key things. Then he apologizes immediately—with all the sincerity of a hostage. Or maybe he doesn’t: sometimes he whines about the subsequent attacks on him. But the one thing he never does? Man up, double down, take his lumps.

In 1987, this magazine created a famous hubbub by labeling George H.W. Bush a “wimp” on its cover. “The Wimp Factor.” Huge stir. And not entirely fair—the guy had been an aviator in the war, the big war, the good war, and he was even shot down out over the Pacific, cockpit drenched in smoke and fumes, at an age (20) when in most states he couldn’t even legally drink a beer. In hindsight, Poppy looks like Dirty Harry Callahan compared with Romney, who spent his war (Vietnam) in—ready?—Paris. Where he learned ... French. Up to his eyeballs in deferments. Where Reagan saddled up a horse with the masculine name of El Alamein, Mitt saddles up something called Rafalca—except that he doesn’t even really do that, his wife does (dressage). And speaking of Ann—did you notice that she was the one driving the Jet Ski on their recent vacation, while Mitt rode on the back, hanging on, as Paul Begala put it to me last week, “like a helpless papoose”?

Another point of comparison with Bush Sr. is instructive. Newsweek identified Bush’s wimp problem as being laced into his adherence to an old, upper-class, WASP civic code: the idea that one does not put oneself inordinately forward. At his boarding school, students literally received grades in a category titled “Claims no more than his fair share of time and attention.” Somehow, in 1987, this magazine decided that high marks in that realm constituted a demerit. But a quarter century, one global financial meltdown, several concentrations of wealth, and many magnitudes of culture-coarsening later, that sounds like a real plus. He was magnanimous, and his magnanimity was grounded in a code of honor.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/07/29/michael-tomasky-a-candidate-with-a-serious-wimp-problem.html


It is a VICIOUS article--vicious. And the right won't read it.

But they won't be able to miss that cover in the supermart!

[pnwmom]

4. It IS vicious, LOL. And hopefully some undecideds will actually buy it.

[calimary]

6. "...the studly swagger of dubya and reagan..." "Studly?" Hardly.