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Go Home Mitt Totes Dat Barge

TIMOTHY NOAH JANUARY 20, 2012

Mitt Totes Dat Barge

BY TIMOTHY NOAH

"Mitt Romney is a rich man, but is Mitt Romney's character formed by his wealth? Is Romney a spoiled, cosseted character? Has he been corrupted by ease and luxury?

"The notion is preposterous. All his life, Romney has been a worker and a grinder. He earned two degrees at Harvard simultaneously (in law and business). He built a business. He's persevered year after year, amid defeat after defeat, to build a political career.

"Romney's salient quality is not wealth. It is, for better and worse, his tenacious drive--the sort of relentlessness that we associate with striving immigrants, not rich scions."

--David Brooks, "The Wealth Issue," Jan. 20 New York Times.

 

"Mitt, meanwhile, had his own ideas about what he would--and wouldn't--do as a father, evidently counting on Ann's maternal generosity. 'I was willing to change the urine-soaked diapers, but the messier types gave me dry heaves,' he told GQ magazine in 2007. 'So my wife allowed me to escape that.'"

--Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, The Real Romney, p. 103.

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15 comments

I believe that the real Willard Romney is not David Brooks' Romney.

- liberalref

January 20, 2012 at 7:30pm

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my God, the poor man, having to get an education and make millions of dollars working in plush offices, and then, the sacrifice, forcing himself to stoop so low as to run for political office (not just any office, he started out running at the top, for US Senator, no town councilman for our hero)...oh, the humiliation. Truly, Romney is as a god among men, and considering what Mormons really believe this ain't much of stretch. And thank God for the working man's hero David Brooks, whom if he were a songwriter would be a combination of Woody and Arlo Guthrie with the rock power of a Springsteen. And a shitty diaper gave Romney the dry heaves? After 3 sons I can honestly say that never happened once to me, the only thing that has ever given me the dry heaves is getting up in the middle of the night to clean up one of my older kids vomit off the floor because they couldn't make it to the bathroom in time. oh, and two girls and a cup did it for me too. If you have to ask, don't ask but blame Timothy Noah's former outfit Slate for exposing me to that video.

- blackton

January 20, 2012 at 7:50pm

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Feh. Had he grown up as many rural young men do, mucking cows or pigs or horse- or hell, if he had a puppy he needed to help housebreak, a little baby shit wouldn't have made him blink. Similarly, if he had also, as many teens do, assist in caring for an ailing grandparent or greatuncle or aunt, then, again, infant crap would have been no big shakes (because there's not a lot more disgusting than the shit produced by fully grown adults when they no longer are able to regulate themselves. And, yeah, had both of those experiences. But then I didn't wander in the wilderness of France, preaching to the heathen, so we all have our crosses to bear.

- miceelf

January 20, 2012 at 8:35pm

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Willard's experiences in France would give me the dry heaves.

- liberalref

January 20, 2012 at 8:51pm

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I would give a big chunk of what's in my elephant bank to see Mitt toting anything let alone a barge:) Or grinding for that matter:)

- Sophia

January 20, 2012 at 9:35pm

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Weird. I raised two baby daughters as a single father and never once had that reaction. I only wanted them to be clean and cooing. Not a big deal. Hard to fathom what goes on inside that man's head.

- roidubouloi

January 20, 2012 at 11:01pm

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Romney's ancestors already endured his share of burdens (the insight Brooks provides in the balance of his column).

- rayward

January 21, 2012 at 9:12am

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"Mitt, meanwhile, had his own ideas about what he would--and wouldn't--do as a President, evidently counting on the generosity of people who have nothing. 'I was willing to cut top rates and repeal the estate tax, but when it came to cutting spending, the majority of the population gave me dry heaves,' he told GQ magazine in 2012. 'So I ran up huge debt.'"

- Nusholtz

January 21, 2012 at 4:00pm

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The Real Romney goes on to say; "However, when Mitt decided to run for president, he started bathing in a tub full of shit to prepare for the excrement he would have to dish and take. 'Now, telling the truth gives me the dry heaves,' laughs Mitt, who claims that's he's become so inured that he can listen to Rush Limbaugh without puking."

- GeoffG

January 21, 2012 at 4:03pm

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miceelf i've been mocking Mitt's time in France (when others were dying in Vietnam) but was rather moved when I read the biographical notes in McCain's oppo research. Mitt was almost killed by a drunk driver while in France, a crash that killed others in the car. His parents for a time thought thier son had died too.

- dubyadoubte

January 21, 2012 at 6:26pm

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I left a comment after that Brooks column that, like many others, it turned out, pointed out that Brooks's argument to the effect that Romney's being rich didn't mean he was a bad person was completely beside the point. Concerns about electing such an outlandishly wealthy man president arise not from a belief that wealth damages a person's character so much as from a belief that such singular riches might be expected to bias a person's understanding of the collective good. Imagine a candidate for the Democratic nomination who tried to challenge Obama from the left. Let this hypothetical candidate be a professor of moral philosophy a la Peter Singer (though American-born), and to lend an air of plausibility to her candidacy let's suppose that this professor is both a charismatic writer and speaker with a keen grasp of policy and that, something like Obama himself, she has paid her dues in the state legislature of the state where she holds her tenured professorship. Now let us suppose that in line with her rigorous arguments about the the global collective good she has foresworn childbearing and lives voluntarily in relative poverty, eating rice and beans in her tiny studio apartment with a bicycle her only means of personal transportation, in order that she can donate three quarters of her after-tax income to Oxfam. As a liberal from the womb and a backsliding Unitarian, I'd likely take a shine to such a candidate, and I would never suggest that her chosen manner of living was anything other than good and admirable, but at the same time her asceticism would give me real pause when it came time for me to cast a vote. I'd be afraid that she was too much of an outlier, that on some level she might believe that what was good for her--living like a Carmelite nun--was good for everyone.

- AaronW

January 22, 2012 at 7:25am

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AaronW I have a different take. There are capitalist businessmen who are completely self-centered; and profit, regardless of its cost to others or its long term effect, is the bottom line. Pump as much oil until it is gone; lumber out the trees; sell the factory to a competitor who will close it; pollute the air and water, etc. I admire a businessman who does not do that, who takes the insurance money and keeps the factory open( instead of moving it to Mexico to make more off of a lower wage) and does it out of a bare allegiance to the people who worked for a company he owned. Romney strikes me as being in the former group.

- Nusholtz

January 22, 2012 at 5:09pm

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It strikes me, Aaron, that that is a pretty good description of why Jimmy Carter was such a lousy president, and why both times I voted for him it was with profound distaste and unease. Too disconnected from the lives of most people. It is also why I think Bloomberg is a lousy mayor. He has no idea what it is like to live in New York City as opposed to floating somewhere above New York City.

- roidubouloi

January 23, 2012 at 6:43am

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"He earned two degrees at Harvard simultaneously." Not to nitpick, but to be fair, it was a dual-degree program. It wasn't like he was taking a full load in both the law and business schools at the same time.

- ATLeft

January 23, 2012 at 9:50am

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I only get dry heaves when I read David Brooks and I've seen 'Two Girls One Cup'.

- singlspeed

January 23, 2012 at 11:03am

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