Pot & Kettle

Today's lesson in the archaeology of the many Romneys comes from 1994, when the late Senator Edward Kennedy resolved to make Romney a memory in their race for the United States Senate in Massachusetts. Kennedy and his campaign made great use of Romney's adventures as a vulture capitalist. […] Fed up, Romney decided that […] he'd point out that the Kennedys weren't exactly holding bake sales themselves, and that they hadn't made their particular pile singing in the choir, either. At which point, the Senior Senator laid him out flat:

"The Kennedys are not in public service to make money. We have paid too high a price."

[...]

The line of attack on Romney for what he's done in business is not to accuse him of greed, it's to accuse him of having all the human empathy of a brick tossed through a window. If you're running against Romney, who's done nothing his entire career except make money for himself and his investors, it is a more obvious strategy today than it was in 1994. More people are out of work longer. And it's certainly emotionally effective. The problem is that the president goes around the country undermining the strategy by cozying up to the people who are in the same business as Romney is.

Ted Kennedy, filthy rich son of a bootlegger pappy, was able to get away with this because he and his brothers could have spent their entire lives chasing tail on Miami Beach and, instead of doing that all the time, they also threw themselves into public service to the point where two of them were shot to death for their trouble. (And let's be kind to Romney and not mention that, when his war erupted, Jack Kennedy signed up for virtually suicidal PT boat duty while, when his time to be called came, Romney dedicated himself to keeping Provence safe for Mormonism and from the Viet Cong.) So, when Kennedy hooked off the jab in that debate, there was so much emotional power behind it that Romney went down like a sack of meal.

The president doesn't have that option. He needs the money too badly. So, at the same time he's lining up in his commercials with unemployed steelworkers, he's raising money from hedge-fund cowboys, and speaking softly about Jamie Dimon and his unfortunate experience at the casino's $2 billion window. Meanwhile, Steve Rattner, the president's genius car czar, is calling the ad unfair, and Republicans are pointing out (rightly) that Jonathan Levine, one of the president's chief bundlers, was actually in charge of Bain when it closed the steel mill in question.

  Charles Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.