A Romney campaign source forwarded the following internal “eyes only” campaign memo to me:
To All Campaign Staff:
I support a free press, except for the press who now think reporting on what I did fifty years ago is as relevant as what I have done in my recent adult life. I barely even knew the four people who say I bullied the one person my advisers say I don’t recall. So to make it a little easier for my friends in the liberal, pro-American enemies’ media, I have decided to practice full disclosure on my entire life…..
I refused to peek when I breastfed.
I never really supported my Massachusetts health care plan or Obama’s plan modeled on my Massachusetts plan that I didn’t really support.
I have always opposed Russian hegemony even before I knew it had nothing to do with undocumented Russians trimming my hedges or working at one of my hedge funds.
I support the traditional nuclear family and nuking more of our enemies’ nuclear families than Obama does.
I believe only men and women should be able to enter the sanctity of divorce.
I have never lied, driven over the speed limit, or used any illegal drug. In fact, I have never even been at a party where I personally remember seeing anyone using drugs, except people who I knew were eventually going to support Obama.
I have never knowingly cheated in school, except as a protest against misleading tests given to me by liberal professors.
I am always sensitive to the beliefs and practices of others. When I have been with my many Jewish friends I have never eaten milk with meat. I have never had bread before the end of Passover. I’ve liked every sermon in every synagogue that I have ever heard, and never walked out early, fallen asleep or asked what the sermon I just heard was about. It’s also not true that after one Saturday service I shoved a bunch of cookies and bagels into a Ziploc and brought them to campaign headquarters.
I have never spoken ill of any voters in a battleground state.
I can relate to people all over this fine country because I have homes or property in almost every state… And, best of all, I have a real birth certificate proving I was born here.
Why should anyone be surprised that the media — old, new and still to be redefined — now investigate literally everything about a candidate? If a ridiculously significant number of Republicans, aided by right-wing bloggers, Republican politicians and self-described billionaires named Donald still raise doubts about Obama’s qualifications to be President, because he was supposedly born outside of the country, it makes it “boy-cries-wolf” more difficult to cry foul when Romney’s (questionably sourced) childish exploits are minutely examined and then sold to the world as an indictment of Romney’s character.
Does anyone seriously believe that the reason Romney supposedly attacked another teenager was because he had a negative anti-gay agenda he planned to roll out fifty years later? Does reporting that incident provide us with keen insight into Romney’s economic and foreign policy decision- making?
Or does it just provide us with more insight into a terrible decision Romney may have made in his youth, not that unlike many terrible decisions we all made as we were developing into adults? We just don’t have thousands of people investigating our childhood, since we chose not to run for political office and unwrap our lives for instant sliming.
Enough already.
One doesn’t have to be a Romney supporter (which I am not) to suggest that we would be far better off focusing on our candidates’ more current (and relevant) beliefs and actions. Otherwise, on election night, America is likely to end up with the tarnished survivor of a campaign hazing ritual and not the best person positioned to lead our country through these difficult and challenging times.
