For all that, Romney is still Romney. I remember sitting amazed at a Romney town hall in New Hampshire in 2008 when he didn’t express any empathy for a girl who stood up and asked a question about stem cells against the backdrop of her cousin who had suffered a terrible injury. I thought of that event when, at the Hopkinton town hall, a college-age girl asked Romney why he would say that ideally, children should be raised by a man and woman — as he did when asked about gay marriage — when she was raised by her mother and grandmother. At least a warm, sympathetic word or two seemed in order, but Romney basically reverted to his standard answer on gay marriage.
In such circumstances it’s as if he doesn’t see persons, only disembodied data points to be slotted into his hard drive so he can download the appropriate response….
Wait, this is a criticism! Give me a candidate who deals in data points! But alas, I’m not the typical voter. If Mitt Romney gets nominated we may see the broad outlines of a campaign which similarities to 1988, when a robotic technocratic Massachusetts governor was running for the Democrats. Of course Romney has been dealt a much “better” economic card. So the American people may yet vote for the Mormon robot! In 2008 they voted for a black liberal with a long association with a black nationalist preacher who regularly expressed anti-American views.
Why not replace the US president with an actual robot? The robot-president’s major campaign donors could program it so that for any policy challenge, it produces a list of possible responses that they might accept. Among these possible responses, the program should eliminate those that will move the robot’s political base to desert it and back a robot controlled by a rival syndicate of investors in a primary. From the remaining options, choose the one that has the highest favorable rating in the opinion polls. That seems to be how the biological presidents have been making policy in recent decades, so the change wouldn’t be particularly radical. Granted, the robot-president might not look as good on television as do biological entities such as Mr O and his predecessors, but in view of the shrinking audience for news coverage of all kinds that aspect of it might not be so widely noticed as to cause trouble.
I thought of that event when, at the Hopkinton town hall, a college-age girl asked Romney why he would say that ideally, children should be raised by a man and woman — as he did when asked about gay marriage — when she was raised by her mother and grandmother.
I’m not the average voter, either, I suppose, but I hate these idiotic gotchas that miss the point. Of course, a kid CAN be reared by two female or male relatives, just as a person can live a fulfilling life without a limb. The point is that it’s not the most IDEAL situation. How much better would the girl’s childhood had been if the father had been there, too (assuming, of course, he’s not some horrid monster).
Given the mannerisms of the more recent presidential candidate, John Kerry, perhaps we could seek a unified theory of Massachussetts politicians with presidential ambitions.
I’d prefer a data-driven president, too, but I don’t know that we’ve ever had one. The reality is that a president’s primary job is to persuade. Whether it’s voters, Congress or foreign heads of state, he needs to do more than just point to a spreadsheet of statistics.