A Mere Generation Later

For the noblesse oblige of one generation to be followed by the grab-it-all mentality of the heirs is a familiar story. Coming from a political family adds another dimension to "What Mitt Romney Learned From His Dad."

Rick Perlstein presents this scenario—

...You are an aspiring office-holder, a young and handsome and ambitious man on the rise, and your father loses an election. Dad is your hero, and then the world's goat; you start rethinking your vision of how the world works.

... Pollster Lou Harris said late in 1966 that George Romney, then governor of Michigan, "stands a better chance of winning the White House than any Republican since Dwight D. Eisenhower." Then, just over a year later, he was humiliated with a suddenness and intensity unprecedented in modern American political history... His son was 19 years old. What makes Mitt – né Willard – Romney, run? Much, I think, can be understood via that specific trauma.

That sudden humiliation was the reaction to Romney's 1967 reversal on the Vietnam War—and his attributing his earlier pro-war stance to the "brainwashing" he got from the military and State Department during his first (1965) visit to the country. Romney's accurate predictions of disaster would be ignored, as the media used the "brainwashing" sound-bite to turn him into a laughingstock.

Romney's public career was marked, says Perlstein, by "shocking authenticity; his courage in sticking to his positions without fear or favor was extraordinary." While head of American Motors he derided Detroit's products as "gas-guzzling dinosaurs." During his presidential campaign—even when his popularity plummeted after the "brainwashing" comments—Romney continued speaking against the war.

His opponent, meanwhile, running what you might call a robotic campaign, just bullshitted about Vietnam, hinting he had a secret plan to end it. The truth was a dull weapon to take into a knife fight with Richard Nixon – who kicked Romney's ass with 79 percent of the vote. When people call his son the "Rombot," think about that: Mitt learned at an impressionable age that in politics, authenticity kills. Heeding the lesson of his father's fall, he became a virtual parody of an inauthentic politician. In 1994 he ran for senate to Ted Kennedy's left on gay rights; as governor, of course, he installed the dreaded individual mandate into Massachusetts' healthcare system. Then he raced to the right to run for president.

He's still inauthentic – but with, I think, an exception. Every time he opens his mouth on the subject of capitalism, he says what he sincerely believes, which happens to fit neatly with present-day Republican ideology: that rich people deserve every penny they have, and if people complain about anything rich people do, it's only because they're envious.

This too, says Perlstein, is rebellion against his father, whose

... vision of how capitalism should work was in every particular the exact opposite of the one pushed by the vulture capitalist he sired. (If George Romney's AMC was around now, Mitt Romney's Bain Capital would probably be busy turning it into a carcass.) A critic once said he was "so dedicated to good works his entrance into politics is like sending a Salvation Army lass into the chorus at a burlesque house." As a CEO he would give back part of his salary and bonus to the company when he thought they were too high. He offered a pioneering profit-sharing plan to his employees. Most strikingly, asked about the idea that "rugged individualism" was the key to America's success, he snapped back, "It's nothing but a political banner to cover up greed." He was the poster child for the antiquated notion that corporations have multiple stakeholders: the workers that breathe them life, the communities in which they are situated, and the nation to whom they owe a patriotic obligation – most definitely and emphatically not just stockholders, as Mitt and his defenders say.

As if that weren't a striking enough then-and-now contrast, BuzzFeed digs up this account of Romney's meeting with Saul Alinsky after the 1967 Detroit riots.

When slum organizer Saul Alinsky, with the West Side Organization’s militant Negroes and clerics, wanted to meet with the white Detroit rulers, Romney indirectly arranged the meeting, and attended. Democratic Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh avoided the rough company.

"I think you ought to listen to Alinsky," Romney told his reluctant white friends. "It seems to me that we are always talking to the same people. Maybe the time has come to hear new voices." Said an Episcopal bishop, "He made Alinsky sound like a Republican."

Charles Pierce picked up the story on his blog ,where commenter John Fienberg asks, "Is there any way to bring George Romney back to life and have him run against Obama instead of these Republican clowns?"