Mr. Perfect Candidate vs. Reality
I was reading an article on the Borowitz Report where he characteristically lampoons Mr. Romney with great skill and panache. Do read the piece, it’s priceless. I follow Andy on twitter @BorowitzReport and his tweets never fail to amaze even this jaded old poli-pundit.
But, back to the reason for this … rant, for lack of a better word. See that picture there of Mitt? It is also on Andy’s Blog (In fact I snipped it from there!) Leave me alone, I will deny everything! Anyway - that picture kept drawing my eye. It was … perfect. Hell, it was too perfect. Perfect white teeth, perfectly formed smile to confidently display those perfect pearls, perfect hair (of course), perfect tan, no blemishes (airbrush alert?) Perfect Flag in Perfect Background, Perfectly knotted perfect tie fronting a freshly pressed perfectly white shirt with perfect lapels finished off by a perfect jacket (probably Italian).
And … that’s what bothers me (us). Mr. Romney is Mr. Perfect.
You probably recall him ‘dressing down’ before … in perfectly creased blue jeans, never worn till just this photo-op moment (then donated to Goodwill?) And that perfectly plaid “I’m a Cowboy, Yeha” Orange Shirt. Perfectly pressed. Perfectly rolled up sleeves. Mr. Perfect Cowboy.
Well, I, and the Nation, don’t buy it. And we shouldn’t. Mr. Perfect doesn’t exist, nor should he - really. And when we see The Perfect Candidate we are taken aback, it affronts our sense of … real. We (at least us Dems, I can’t speak for the Tea Party - they lost their minds and my respect long, long ago) … we Dems KNOW that a Candidate should be “One of Us”. Should have at least some commonality with us. Should be … at least a little bit imperfect. A string hanging from a shirt, perhaps a bit of sweat from the heat of the day under the pits, something that says “I am in this just like you - I am NOT A ROBOT”. There’s a lot of us that see through this disguise - and, of course, Mr. Perfect is prone to his gaffes (apparently looks don’t translate to speech). We call him RomneyBot and other not so nice Android names - and it’s because his manners are just as starched as his China Shipped Overnight FedEx Perfectly Starched White Shirt.
Nope. What we expect to see in a Candidate is very much like the Image above… it and the text are too close together. I tried for quite awhile to figure out what arcane HTML that Tumblr would like that would add a bit of 10 pixel white space around that image … to no avail. And you know what. It’s OK. It has met my lowered expectations of editing. It and I am not Perfect. But we get the message across, however imperfectly, cause we don’t care all that much that a blog is perfect. And the vast majority of us aren’t very comfortable in The Perfect Suit. 
Mitt is. And that is a real difference between he & I (and us). Get it? He’s a Suit. We aren’t. It really is that simple. The Suits should (and will) vote for him. But the vast Majority shouldn’t. Because Suits simply are not to be trusted. President Obama wears pretty much the same nice clothes as Mitt. He is President of the United States after all. But when Barack was growing up he didn’t wear suits. He wore… street clothes. Like us. And in his heart, he is a street fighter. That was good enough to get into Harvard Law. Where he didn’t wear too many suits. On weekends at the White House when no big shin-digs are planned, he’s probably lounging around in sweats. Or at least wishes he could. The Sweats would have the Presidential Seal on them, mind you. But they would be comfortable. I’m not sure Mitt knows what Sweats are. I highly doubt he’s ever worn them. And that’s the difference. A Clothes says a lot about a Man. Mitt wears High Maintenance Super Rich Clothes. And always has. Always.
Now, what you have to realize here —- what is important to understand —- Mr. Perfect is an Illusion. There are cracks there. Big cracks that give us glimpses into his Perfect World. And those glimpses are SCARY. From “Corporations are people too” to his Etch-A-Sketchiness (ok, the Primary is sealed, time to appeal to the Indies … wink wink My Tea Party Minions — I don’t really mean this —- unless I do, but I can’t disclose that cause … I’m Mr. Perfect. The Perfect Candidate. The Perfect Clown.
