[img]1|left|||no_popup[/img]If you hired a graphic artist to envision the Perfect Presidential Candidate, he would create a portrait of Mitt Romney.
None of the cackling Democrat pandering, “Vote for me because I am a woman,” or “Vote for me because I am black.” None of the equally odious John McCain pandering, either, “Vote for me because I became a hero by spending 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of the Viet Cong, and that should give me a pass with voters for the rest of my life.”
How He Is Different
Only the clean-cut, journalistically handsome (I just threw that in) Mr. Romney remains above the juvenile fray, beyond the reach of the lower-class panderers.
There is one skyscraper difference between the deserving Mr. Romney and the city commissioner-level Other Three :
Mr. Romney gained his stature the old-fashioned way. He earned it.
How Do You Earn Birth?
Each of the Other Three shamelessly admits that the only reason he or she deserves support is because of a circumstance forced upon him or her, a condition in which none had a choice.
Ms. Hillary was born a woman. Mr. Obama was born black. Mr. McCain, quite against his will, was taken prisoner.
Follow their campaigns and the journalists who evaluate them on the internet and in print. Those three are the main motivating reasons voters give for supporting them.
But sincere, even slightly curious persons realize there is nothing meritorious about being born a woman, about being born a black or about being taken prisoner.
You, pal, were acted upon. You had no choice.
This Is What a True Idol Looks Like
Mr. Romney alone was not acted upon.
He made himself what he is by dint of deep spiritual, moral, intellectual commitment, the embodiment of family values, a true American idol, not the teenybopper type on television. He is the Boy Scout in the room, and you know what liberals have done to smear the image of Scouts.
These musings are prompted by a disappointingly undeniable fact: Mr. Romney and I are not far apart in the number of delegates we have accumulated in the first month of state primaries. And I am not running for anything.
Neither decent people nor the yahoos who comprise the bulk of the electorate are going for the only candidate in the field who could have met Boy Scout standards both as a child and an adult.
We Are in the Dim Bulb Business
Alas, Mr. Romney has aroused less passion than my first wife who thought that emotion ought to be outlawed.
“Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public,” H.L. Mencken said 85 years ago, an apt epitaph for the doomed candidacy of Mr. Romney. Voters love gutter-wrestling. Mr. Romney does not.
Why he never caught on with any American voters anywhere is an unplumbed enigma.
The Girl Everybody Ignores
Picture a beautiful long-haired girl from Brentwood, pertly perched on a chair in a corner at a dance, tens of feet from the nearest boys. Why? This has been Mr. Romney’s fate since he started campaigning.
Mr. Romney’s personal and professional lives have been antithetical to the smudged, “well-yes-but” resumes of the Other Three.
Like a fleet of amoebas scurrying across your living room carpet, two principal low-flying theories abound:
He is a Mormon.
Envy of the rich.
At the National Review’s The Corner website this morning, John Derbyshire tells of an email he received from a Midwestern conservative activist:
“Romney lost here for two reasons that are not mutually exclusive: class warfare and envy. People don't like him because he is richer, smarter, better-looking and more successful than they are, and so much so, that it is impossible for him to camouflage the difference. Oh, they will make claims such as religion or flip-flops, but it’s all hogwash. This is, of course, contrary to what conservatism ought to be, but it is in line with humanity as it is.”
The nasty news on the underside of this Presidential season, then, may be that for those who worship the god of Victimhood, Ms. Hillary and Mr. Obama make them feel so good.
Mr. Romney is the “yes” to nearly everything important that Mr. McCain is not.
The single true victim in the field may be a man who worked harder than the Other Three, thought longer, earned more money, was blessed with better looks and belongs to a mysterious religion that seems to scare Americans. Mr. Romney’s scary religion taught him pandering was wrong.
Perhaps this weekend, he can take the Other Three to his church for several needed late-life lessons.