23 | October | 2012 | Existential Ennui

Tags

editorial, Election 2012, foreign policy, Mitt Romney, Neo-cons, war hawks

Your intrepid writer (that would be me) is going into the darkness once again in an attempt to get inside the head of the average, leaning Romney, but feeling slightly uncomfortable. The realm of the few undecided who are fairly high information types. So the five of you, listen up.

I have a safety rope attached, so if I tug twice, pull you swabbies for all you are worth. This ain’t no aircraft carrier you know.

Okay, so Romney is no Georgie Bushkins. I mean in what drives this man. Georgie was the screw-up in the family Bush and decided that bein’ Prez would be a good way to show old Dad and Babs that he was “somebody.” Romney is no Dubya, in that sense.

No, I read Romney as driven by his Mormonism. A recall a younger man talking about coming back from mission and feeling as he claims most of them do, “so anxious to get on with making their mark in the world.” It’s a fundamental stand of the Mormon Church as I understand it, to take the gifts given and achieve for the glory of God, (and the church).

Now, George Romney came up from nothing and became not only the CEO of a major car company, but a two-term Governor if Michigan, and failed at running for President. Willard starts up three floors. Becoming a CEO of a car company is no real accomplishment, so he switched to venture capitalism, where he certainly made his mark. But being even Governor would not measure up, so I believe he set his sights on the Presidency while still a very young man.

This is not to prove anything to anyone else, it is to PROVE TO HIMSELF that he has achieved what he should. All his efforts for decades have been setting up that scenario. The last two years as Governor of Massachusetts was largely spent out of state setting up his political framework.

That is the backdrop.

Now consider yourself an average hardworking working class stiff who isn’t doing all that well. You’ve been treading water for a long time, just getting by. You figure you’re entitled to better. You aren’t much of an ideologue. You don’t consider yourself a racist, a sexist, or unfeeling when it comes to the needy. You’re more inclined to live and let live and so some of Romney’s rhetoric on social issues makes you uncomfortable.

But, you think, “hey, he is a successful businessman, and if business is happy, maybe they will start ramping up their companies, hiring and raising wages. That’s good for me. Romney probably can do that even though I know he is basically an opportunist. Business will love him being president, and that should be good for me. I don’t feel real good about how he might screw the less fortunate, but hey we all have to sacrifice. If this makes our economy better for all of us in the end, we just gotta bite the bullet. And besides, the Democrats won’t just lay down on this social stuff. They’ll fight him.”

So you are leaning toward the Willard, even though you know he changes his mind about most things, and you don’t really have a clue where he really stands on much of anything.

Now bring in the foreign policy debate.

Romney has undeniably rattled the sabre for months, if not years, when it comes to foreign policy. We have heard about the President being an apologist, (code for not being a real American), about American Exceptionalism, about American superiority and how we are the leader of the world. We have heard all about not being tough enough on Russia, Iran, Syria, and China and that we have not glued ourselves sufficiently tight to Israel. We have heard about leaving Iraq too soon, and not setting deadlines for withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Most all of this has come from his foreign policy advisors who are basically a collection of Bushites. Fully 18 or 24 of his advisors are old Bush boys. They are essentially neo-cons and war hawks who have their very own agenda (which they pushed Bush into adopting), and how want to return to that through Romney.

In the debate, Romney did not say any of the things he’s been parroting for months about various aspects of foreign policy. Instead, he pivoted to the hard middle, and tried to present himself as a “man of peace” who would leave no stone unturned to avoid war anywhere in the world. He agreed with Obama at nearly every turn. He did what he did in the first debate, he pretended not to know anything about the policies he had been pushing for years.

In a stunning reversal, he showed once again that he will say anything–literally anything–to get a vote.

Why does this matter given that this is nothing new?

It shows that he is, like Palin, supremely uninterested in foreign affairs. I heard in passing that a couple of his aides admit that he doesn’t read the daily foreign policy briefings. He had memorized a whole set of “policies” for the world, none of which he cares about. When it became prudent to help secure the “women’s vote” (presumably more pacifist), to tack to the middle and seem not threatening, he did so.

He doesn’t respect the electorate. But that is not the crime. The crime is that he does not care about the world, insofar as it has nothing to do with becoming President. Being President is ALL that matters. And if he becomes President, he will continue not carrying, and the same neocons and war hawks will be making the decisions.

The decisions they make will invariably, I believe, lead us into another war. The neocons desire American control in the Middle East and those reasons have zero to do with stability there other that the stability required to get their hands on the oil. That is their goal. They live in a weird world of American superiority and control over the entire globe. Where we can force everyone to dance to our tune because we can and will enforce our will on them.

A vote for Romney is a vote for shadow government who will “do the foreign policy” while Willard makes life more comfortable for the rich, who he truly believes are the reason why America is what it is. The rest of us?

Somebody’s got to carry the rifles. It ain’t gonna be his sons and grandkids–they go on “mission” instead. It’s your kids who will be the fodder in the next war machine.

So consider that when you vote. Please, THINK.