I’ve never met Mitt Romney. He might have noticed me in Iowa when he took the stage in the middle of a manufacturing plant during the hellish slap-fest that Republicans called “primary season.” The GOP nominee might have seen me standing there, silently judging the conservatives I was packed in with.
To call the audience shoulder-to-shoulder would be an understatement. It was really more of a mosh pit around a stage — a boring, all white, mostly stationary mass of people who probably didn’t know what “mosh pit” meant and would surely disapprove if they did, but a mosh pit nonetheless.
The signature anger was there. A round woman in light jeans made passive-aggressive comments behind me to her husband, whispering, “you’d think someone so tall would have been courteous and stood in the back,” just purposefully loud enough for me to hear. Or maybe she thought my ears were so high up the words wouldn’t travel. You’d think someone so short would have gotten there earlier.
Mitt barreled onto stage 30 minutes late. (A true diva knows how to keep an audience waiting and anxious.) A long, slow ramp resembling a runway took Romney from a staging area into the warehouse-like space the thousand spectators were corralled into. His sons and wife, Ann, were waiting for him on a circular stage at the end of the ramp. A Bieber-fever like reaction erupted from the crowd at the sight of their hero, their answer to the evil man who singlehandedly ruined the America they once knew and loved — but still believed could be great again.
After being slowed by hundreds of hands reaching out to touch their messiah and feel what made his skin holier than thou, Mitt reached his handsome family, who, for some reason, seemed surprised to see him. “Honey!” I imagined Ann exclaiming, “Are all these people — are they here to see you?”
The crowd fell silent at their president’s request. It seemed silly to address him as anything else. We call past presidents by their title, so why not future?
I’ve never met Mitt Romney. In fact, I’m almost positive he didn’t notice me that flat Iowa evening. Amid the sea of white, I hadn’t noticed that the short woman had wedged herself past me only to realize she was still shorter than the near-40 people who stood between her and the stage that the Romneys’ actual, real feet were touching. She must have still wished to trade bodies with one of the folks whose longest finger touched the cuff of Mitt’s jeans during his catwalk up. Still, by the transitive property of mosh pit bodies, she was on stage with him. I hope she couldn’t see a damn thing.
I’ve never met Mitt Romney. Over the course of the last year or so, I’ve read tens of thousands of words about him — most by people who have only heard his voice through a speaker system. But I’ve never had a conversation with the man. Not now, and not before he was a world-touring celebrity.
On Aug. 21, People magazine interviewed his then-new running mate, Paul Ryan. “Any low-brow pleasures, like ‘The Real Housewives?’ ” the interviewer asked him. I don’t like People magazine. Maybe previously I’d have said “hate,” but I have since learned the word should be reserved for things that actually make the world a significantly worse place. I hate oil spills. People may make some readers insecure about their bodies, but it certainly isn’t worth hating. It’s mostly just creepy.
I understand the entertainment industry’s economy is dependent on the market forces of “celebrity.” But it’s strange that hundreds of thousands of people care what a person they’ve never met, and can statistically reason never will, named their child or wore while ordering tacos.
I’ve never met Barack Obama. I saw the president when he came to Ann Arbor in January. He seems like a nice guy. By most accounts he is. His smile doesn’t look like it was surgically implanted on a chiseled stone face and masks post-surgery pain. Barack Obama didn’t ask Republicans to campaign on what has to be the most money ever spent in human history to ruin one man’s reputation. But neither did Mitt Romney. They’re both playing along, sure, most politicians are — but this can’t be the race either respectable man wanted.
Yes, the 47-percent comment was bad, and it’s difficult to fault those who don’t pay much in federal taxes for worrying about a Romney presidency. Yes, Republicans rake in more contributions from big business. Yes, their policy reflects less concern about U.S. income inequality, but it’s a stretch to take the gaffe as more than another in the echo chamber. In September, Sen. John McCain said the best advice he had for the candidates is to stay rested: “Don’t get so fatigued that you lose your temper or say something stupid.” Get some rest, gentlemen.
We’ve circled back to a national mood where gut feeling based on likability or lies has replaced numbers, experts and logic — and party politics encourages such substitutions. It’s not that expensive to convince the uninformed to vote for their favorite pair of celebrities. It’s creepy that Joe Biden can’t eat an ice cream cone without 17 news outlets forsaking traditional fact checking to be the first to report the red-to-pink-sprinkle ratio.
Like People magazine, America will still be here in 2016. Our president has not ruined our country. The Obama administration — which consists of thousands of highly intelligent people, not a single man controlling every decision — hasn’t fixed every American ailment. If they did, it’d be unprecedented; on a macro level, four years is four minutes. And contrary to conventional liberal sentiment, if elected, Mitt Romney will not ruin the country. America isn’t on its deathbed, and it would take far longer than four years, botched or otherwise, to land there.
America deserves better than a People magazine election. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama deserve better than having their basic moral character judged as a lazy alternative to their policy — by voters who really don’t know them fundamentally as people and never will. There are highly intelligent Republicans. There are highly intelligent Democrats. Both deserve better than blanket hatred and dismissal.
I’ve never met Mitt Romney. I certainly disagree with many of his policy positions, and I’m probably not going to vote for him. But a bad guy? Months ago, standing in that Iowa warehouse, I looked at him and said, “Yes, a bad guy.” In hindsight, I was standing way too far from that stage to see a thing.
Andrew Weiner is a Public Policy junior and the managing editor for The Michigan Daily.