Courtesy of Loop21
Not too late into the night of New Hampshire’s Republican primary, an ecstatic Mitt Romney took to a campaign rally stage to acknowledge his sound victory in the Granite State.
Romney’s five adult sons, each sporting slightly varied chisel-faced grins, and his glowing wife Anne joined him there, as he delivered a pre-written rebuke of the nation’s first African American president. When he finished, a crew of bright-eyed grandchildren and daughters-in-law joined the Romneys on stage.
They were the picture of health, a PSA for moneyed success, and or something you might see in a pamphlet for the Citizens Council of America.
Optics aside, several haunting lines from Romney’s sermonette struck at the core of America’s ever-existing cultural divide:
“Our campaign is more than about replacing the president,” Romney proclaimed. “It’s about saving the soul of America. We want to restore America to the founding principles that made this country great.”
That “restore America” rhetoric isn’t unique to Romney, but its populist appeal relies on a distortion of American history. It’s a lie that depicts America as always good to and equal for everyone who has called her home.
Restore, for Willard Mitt Romney, conjures up memories of a charmed existence. A prep school Mitt, of about 11- or 12-years-old, may have enjoyed an ice cream cone in the town square of an affluent Detroit suburb where he grew up. His father, an incredibly successful automobile executive, was likely close by and having his shoes shined by a man of color.
In that very real world, Mitt’s father was a god. George Romney wielded the power to give his children anything, educate them in the finest institutions and set Mitt along a path that would lead him to the Republican nomination for president.
For Mitt, restoring even a bit of his father’s storied success, and his own seemingly carefree adolescence, could mean the brightest future for the grandchildren nipping at his heels. An accurate appraisal of history suggests a less than charmed path for George’s shoe shiners.