Brainwashing, flip-flopping and dry cleaning
What do these three terms have in common, other than being applicable to three guys with really “good hair”?
If you’re puzzled by the question because dry-cleaning seems a bit out of place (brainwashing and flip-flopping clearly being associated with historical presidential candidates), let me try to explain.
When George Romney, Governor of Michigan, former auto executive and potential presidential candidate in 1967, was asked why he’d changed his mind on the efficacy of the Viet Nam war, he asserted that when he went there in 1965 and pronounced it all OK, he’d been brainwashed by the generals and the diplomatic corps. Instead of just saying bluntly, “they lied to me and, for that matter, the American people,” he cast himself in the victim role and effectively ended his run for the Presidency. Indeed, as a long essay in the Boston Globe,commemorating the family history, in honor of his son Willard’s term as Governor of Massachusetts coming to an end, explains, the brainwashing of George Romney is still of interest.
It’s not entirely clear from pictures whether George actually had “good hair” since the fashion back then was to wear it slicked down.
, rather than the moussed do his son now sports, but those who knew the father claim Willard looks like him. It’s his behavior, more cautious and unflappable, that strikes them as different.
Though, my point is clearly that the question, which prompted the “brainwashed” explanation was actually about why George Romney had changed his position on the Viet Nam war in just two years, is a question that’s not all too different from those that were asked of John Kerry about his support for the war in Iraq, leading to the “flip-flop” characterization, and that’s now being asked of Willard Romney about his changing attitudes towards marriage, reproduction and the role of religion in government. And Willard’s answers, not totally unlike his father’s, suggest that perhaps, while his hair was being moussed, he sent his brain to the dry cleaners to have any trace of the liberal leanings he espoused to get elected Governor in the egalitarian state of Massachusetts removed.
I wouldn’t say that Romney is having a series of “out damned spot” moments. Rather, the problem with his disavowal of earlier positions, and what makes it similar to the brainwashing and flip-flopping of Pere Romney and Kerry, is the ease with which all three of these politicians change their positions on what are really matters of life and death. And I think that’s what the people who looked and are looking at these men as officiators of how the nation is run find troubling in the extreme. When Kerry said he voted for the war before he voted against it, or vice versa, he, in effect, said that the lives of millions of people were extinguished by an aye or nay from his lips. George Romney’s answer was similarly dismissive and while I would prefer an admission that the generals lied (an admission that, if properly followed up, might actually have led to a change in U.S. policy and might have precluded the generals lying us into another war in Iraq), what was really offensive was George Romney assuming a position (the victim of deception) that nobody could credit to a man of his experience. And if it was to be believed, then he was clearly unfit for the office he was seeking.
Of course, it may just be that these politicians hold the people they propose to serve in such low esteem that they can’t conceive of the truth actually mattering. Clearly, if George Romney had gone on to explain what exactly he had discovered about the plan to engineer a long-term occupation of the territory of Viet Nam, because of its strategic location on the southern edge of Asia (an occupation that had been made totally unrealistic by three years of bombing), it would have been a different story. Instead, he left the impression that he now knew better, despite being brainwashed earlier, and expected people to just trust his judgment. Which is not very different from what John Kerry expected.
Willard Romney’s vacillations are, of course, a bit different. He’s not yet made life and death decisions that affect a whole nation. But shedding attitudes as a matter of political convenience is not a good predicate for holding public office and his having supervised the commercialization of a global amateur sporting event (the winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah) merely demonstrates that he’s an adept at organizing the transfer of public assets into private wealth. Which is, after all, what conservatives have traditionally about. What we don’t need any more of is the sanctimonious assertion that this transfer promotes the public welfare.
The proof is in the pudding and we’ve now had thirty years of transferring public assets (natural resources and money) into the hands of private corporations and the pockets of middlemen (financiers, insurers, and fund managers) and all the welfare statistics are still headed down-hill. No doubt when George Romney was contemplating sitting behind a desk in the Oval Office, that government should be run like a business was an attractive refrain–one that continued to sound good to Willard as Governor of Massachusetts. But it’s now time to question whether even business is well served by a profit motive that relies on reducing the quality and quantity of goods and services whenever the “bottom line” seems to sag. What has made government attractive to a business culture that relies on both bankruptcy and government bailouts to deal with the proclivity of private enterprise to fail (almost as if it were designed to fail), is simply no longer affordable to a public that’s been wrung dry. The transfer of wealth to one percent of the population from the other ninety-nine percent of us has got to stop and the financial practices that have facilitated this transfer have to be brought to a halt. And that’s not a reality over which we can count on a moussed manager, who’s sent his brain to the dry cleaners, to officiate.
Which is why it’s likely that the day of the brainwashed, flip-flopping and dry-cleaned politician is at an end. At least, i hope so. Bring on the men and/or women who speak the truth and speak it clearly. I know I’m still waiting for someone to explain to the American people why the cities of Iraq, like the cities of Viet Nam back in the 1960s, are being bombed on a daily basis. Back in the day of George Romney it was referred to as “Rolling Thunder” nowadays the Iraqis just refer to it as “continuous bombardment“. Everybody’s still wanting to know how and when it’s going to stop. Whoever explains that to the American people is whom they should elect to be President.
