Mitt Romney's Fundamental Flaw

[Rockntractor]

By Daniel Allott on 7.25.12 @ 6:09AM

Good luck in tracking it down.

One was the divorced son of an alcoholic shoe salesman; another, the stepson of an alcoholic car salesman; still another, the self-proclaimed "black sheep" of his family.

The history of the American presidency is a history of men who have suffered -- and largely overcome -- humble beginnings, immense family hardships, profound personal tragedies, and humiliating public failures.

To put it another way, when considering whom they want to lead them, Americans naturally gravitate toward flawed characters – people whose success is rooted in failure, and whose lives contain the familiar arc of a redemption narrative.

But Mitt Romney doesn't fit this mold. In fact, he may be the least flawed presidential candidate in recent American history. His main flaw, it seems, is that he doesn't really have one.

Theodore Roosevelt had bad health and the simultaneous deaths of his wife and his mother. FDR had polio and a terrible marriage.

Like Romney, John Kennedy was born rich, famous and handsome. But JFK was plagued by health problems, including Addison's disease, a rare endocrine disorder, and chronic and severe back pain. He nearly died fighting in World War II. His sister had developmental disabilities, and he suffered through the deaths of his brother, sister and brother-in-law. His son Patrick died as an infant.

Richard Nixon was born into poverty, and two of his brothers died early in life. He gave up a grant to attend Harvard University in order to stay at home and care for his ailing brother Harold. He suffered a narrow defeat for president in 1960, and the humiliation of a lost election for Governor of California in 1962, before ascending to the presidency.

Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer of humble means who lived for a year as an adult in subsidized public housing.

Ronald Reagan -- the son of an alcoholic shoe salesman -- was America's first divorced president. His second daughter, Christine, lived just one day. And it took him twelve years and three tries before he won the presidency.

Like Kennedy, George H.W. Bush was born into a prominent family. But also like Kennedy, Bush was shot down and nearly died in World War II. Many of Bush's family members were killed in the war.

Bill Clinton's father died when he was an infant. He was raised by an alcoholic stepfather who beat his mother and stepbrother. When Novelist Toni Morrison wrote that Clinton was the "first black president," she wasn't referring just to his liberal policy agenda. As she put it, "Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's and junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas." Or as comedian Chris Rock put it in 1996:

I like Clinton… because he's got real problems. You know, he doesn't have President problems. He's got real problems like you and me. That's right, running out of money, his wife's a pain in the ass. All his friends are going to Jail. I know Bill Clinton. I am Bill Clinton.

George W. Bush grew up as a child of privilege. But he was widely considered a failure -- the family's "black sheep." He was arrested for disorderly conduct as a college student, and again for drunk driving at age 30. His initial forays into the oil business were a bust. Bush only turned things around at age 40, when he underwent a religious conversion, quit drinking and began to take his life seriously.

Finally there's Barack Obama, who grew up with an absent father and an often-absent mother. In his new best-seller The Amateur, Edward Klein reveals that after Obama's humiliating 2002 defeat for a seat in the House of Representatives, Obama "was broke and deeply in debt, and it looked as though he might be finished in public life."

According to Klein, the Obama's marriage was on the rocks and Obama confided in friends that he and Michelle were talking about divorce. Michelle even had divorce papers drawn up, one Obama friend told Klein. Obama's friends said he was so depressed they feared he was suicidal.

Read More>http://spectator.org/archives/2012/0...ndamental-flaw

[LukeEDay]

Romney is one of the most sqeeky clean candidates we ever had. He has never drank, never smoked, never cheated on his wife, goes to Church consistantly, and has no criminal record. It is so much so that the liberals had to go back 150 years to find something the Mormons did to get him on (of course that backfired when talk about the civil war came up).

[Bailey]

Romney is one of the most sqeeky clean candidates we ever had. He has never drank, never smoked, never cheated on his wife, goes to Church consistantly, and has no criminal record. It is so much so that the liberals had to go back 150 years to find something the Mormons did to get him on (of course that backfired when talk about the civil war came up).

So they wont use that against him? if he hasn't paid 10 times the taxes he is supposed to pay they will slam him with a compliant MSM. F#$K I am getting pissed that this.

[LukeEDay]

So they wont use that against him? if he hasn't paid 10 times the taxes he is supposed to pay they will slam him with a compliant MSM. F#$K I am getting pissed that this.

He paid what he was supposed to legally. There are no laws that he broke. In fact, I heard he paid over what he was supposed to...

[Starbuck]

Reading through that list of unfortunates and impoverished children almost - but not quite - makes me wish Al Gore had won, and then been followed by John Kerry. At least the chain of unlikely winners would have been broken.

[Bondai]

That's OK. I find Mitt Romney to be a good and decent man that unlike most Democrats is not trailing a line of trash behind him 10 miles long. Maybe he doesn't know how it is to work two jobs or have to pinch and save just to make ends meet. For some reason I am suppose to reject him as the Republican candidate just because he didn't grow up in a dysfunctional family where an alcoholic father beat his mother at every opportunity.

You know these things may be resume enhancers for Democrats and other politicians but I am glad to have a candidate who doesn't have to tell lies just to cover other lies or has a list of misdeeds that a convicted felon would be proud of. I will gladly choose Romney over someone like Barrack Obama whose entire life has been built on a foundation of lies and and deceit and is totally incapable of telling the difference between right and wrong.

[Odysseus]

Not every president overcame hardship, and not every president who overcame hardship was successful in the presidency, while many who lacked hardship also lacked the demons that undermined others. The founders were all affluent men in their colonies, and men of strong character, but it was not adversity so much as education and a sense of duty and integrity that made Washington, Madison, Jefferson and the rest into great presidents. Ultimately, the question is not whether the candidate overcame some great obstacle in life, but whether the candidate has the right mix of governing philosophy and skills to implement successful policies.

According to his bio, Romney gave his inheritance away and started from scratch. He imposed limits on himself in order to test himself, and he succeeded. And while the left makes a lot of hay about Romney attending prep and Ivy League schools, the fact is that Obama also attended prep school and has an Ivy Leaguie degree. However, we also know that Romney graduated with honors from BYU and Harvard, where he pursued a dual-MBA/Law curriculum that was extremely demanding, and graduated in the top 5% of his class. Even politifact couldn't gloss that over:

Did Romney's career benefit from having well-to-do parents? It certainly eased his way, with their financial help allowing him to focus on his studies. But there's good evidence he also worked hard to make his own success, graduating with honors at BYU and Harvard, and building a reputation at Boston Consulting Group and Bain that ultimately catapulted him to wealth.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...ey-his-parent/

Meanwhile, where are Obama's college grades? What was his GPA? We know that he edited the Law Review, but he never wrote anything for it, and we also know that half of the appointments were driven by faculty preferences, rather than academic excellence.