The Demonization of Politicians Must Continue

Every once in a while, you have to feel sorry for Mitt Romney. One of his surrogates during his unsuccessful 2008 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination was Dr. John Willke, the controversial doctor who inspired Missouri Congressman Todd Akin's now infamous belief that a raped woman is unlikely to become pregnant. Moreover, the good doctor is inconveniently sticking to his guns. A woman being raped, he told theNew York Times last week, "is frightened, tight, and so on. And sperm, if deposited in her vagina, are less likely to be able to fertilize. The tubes are spastic."

No, I have no obligation to give my pity to any politician, especially those who believe that the state has the power to control every aspect of the lies of free men. When career politicians like Obama and Romney attempt to take the same throne, a battle ensues. It's a show. They are the same people, cut from the same cloth, seeking to inflict their world view through the power of the state on unwilling individuals. 

According to the Times, Dr. Michael Greene, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School, dismisses Willke's theories as "just nuts."

Another 2008 Romney supporter was Joe Arpaio, the Arizona sheriff charged by the U.S. Justice Department with discrimination and racial profiling who is also one of the foremost proponents of the equally wacky proposition that President Obama was not born in Hawaii, is therefore not a naturally born U.S. citizen, and consequently is ineligible to serve as president. Arpaio believes the president's birth certificate to be a forgery, and it appears that nothing under the sun can convince him otherwise.

There are lots more birthers out there, including most prominently Donald Trump, all driven by an irrational animus toward the president. Understandably, Governor Romney does not want to needlessly antagonize them. They, too, may well be nuts, but a vote is a vote irrespective of the citizen's IQ or emotional equilibrium.

Still, it was disturbing to hear Governor Romney quip this past Friday that "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate." To be sure, he subsequently dismissed his comments as an attempt to "have a little humor" in the campaign. "I've said throughout the campaign and before, there's no question where [President Obama] was born," he told CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley. "He was born in the U.S." The problem, of course, is that the generally humorless birthers were certain to interpret the "birth certificate" comment not as a joke but as an indication that Governor Romney was sympathetic to their cause. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowddescribed it as "a bat's squeak calling to the basest emotions."

Last year, in an article in which I argued that Governor Romney's Mormon faith should not be made an issue in the 2012 presidential campaign, I observed that he "does not come across in any way as mean-spirited," and quoted him as telling the Values Voters Summit that, "We should remember that decency and civility are values, too."

The article is simply a scathing indictment of every politician on today's main stage except Obama. We see through rose-tinted glasses. The author fails to even recognize that Obama has flaws just like Romney, Gingrich, Bush, or Clinton. This is the failure of politics, and the failure of government. 

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