Just Like Iraq? On the Campaign Trail with the Romney Boys
The Romney Boys in Iowa: “Craig got the strawberry rhubarb, Josh and I got the cherry.”
From the Five Brothers blog: “Craig, Josh and I had about as much fun as allowed on a campaign last weekend in Iowa. Road trips and bike rides are very low key ways to get out and stump for the old man…We laughed a lot that weekend, especially when Craig started getting desperate for food halfway through the ride. At one point I remember turning to him and saying, “Isn’t this fun?” to which he gruffly replied: ‘I’m seriously grumpy right now. We have to get food NOW!!’ …we finally found a farm that was selling homemade cookies, pies and ice cream…Craig got the strawberry rhubarb, Josh and I got the cherry.”
Columnist Froma Harrop got right to the heart of what was wrong with Mitt Romney equating his sons’ participation in his campaign with serving in Iraq. Supporters of the former Massachusetts governor and forever Mormon later characterized the question about why his sons aren’t serving in Iraq as “rude.”
We know that the armed forces are all-volunteer (“the good news,” Mitt said) and that few children of the rich have much to do with it. If military service were a prerequisite for becoming president, most of the current contenders would be out of the running. The only candidates making the cut would be Arizona Sen. John McCain, California Rep. Duncan Hunter and Texas Rep. Ron Paul on the Republican side, and Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel on the Democratic.
What’s crashingly offensive about Romney’s response isn’t a small set of ill-chosen words but the entire universe of assumptions behind them. Throughout the campaign, Romney has showcased his athletic boys, ages 26 to 37, as all that is good about America and himself. It apparently never occurred to him that anyone in the audience would place his five princes in the same thought as Sadr City.
The official Romney Website even features a “Five Brothers” blog — a youthful jaunt across a cloudless America that seems solar systems away from the Sunni Triangle. Son Craig talks about how he and brothers Josh and Matt participated in the Annual Great Bicycle Ride across Iowa. (Two of them had trained on a hotel’s stationary bikes, we are told.) Photos show the clan boating in New Hampshire, bonding after a volleyball match and enjoying a game at Boston’s Fenway Park.
And the boys’ day jobs? Ben attends medical school in Boston, Craig works for an ad agency in New York, Josh develops real estate in Salt Lake City, and Matt manages commercial properties in San Diego.
Tagg helps run his father’s campaign and gets a bit political on his blog. He writes that New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, wants to “raise taxes, grow government, take over health care and run away from Iraq.”
So while the “chickenhawk” label could stick to most of the candidates, there’s something especially jarring about the Romney family portrait: six hunky males, all untouched by military service. (During the Vietnam War, Mitt obtained a draft deferment to do missionary work in France.)
As part of his answer to the “rude” question, Romney called for a “surge of support” for the troops. A more politically astute response would have been to propose a national program requiring everyone’s children, including his own, to serve their country in some fashion.
It’s a good bet that the idea never crossed his mind.
