Michael Tomasky: How Mitt’s Tax Returns Show His Character Defect

[babylonsister]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/07/michael-tomasky-how-mitt-s-tax-return-show-his-character-defect.html

Michael Tomasky: How Mitt’s Tax Returns Show His Character Defect
by Michael Tomasky Aug 7, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

Why does it matter that Mitt won’t release his tax returns? Because it’s yet another sign that the man suffers from a pathological mixture of insecurity and entitlement.



What earthly power can make Mitt Romney release his tax returns? None whatsoever. Incredible as it may seem, it’s true: He can go all the way to November 6 without giving an inch, and there’s not one thing anyone can do about it. He pretty obviously thinks that the heat he’s taking for sitting on the returns is more bearable than the heat he’d have to endure by releasing them. And that calculation says something astonishing about the man, and ultimately, that is the issue here—this is far more about Romney’s character than it is about the money per se. And character is very quickly becoming the issue that the Obama camp hadn’t even planned on exploiting but now must, because Romney’s lack of it has become so obvious.

snip//

Think about it. Through a week of a Democratic convention, when his tax returns will be mentioned by speaker after speaker. Through the early fall campaigning. Through the debates, when he will again say that he feels he’s revealed all he needs to reveal. Through the campaign’s final, home-stretch weeks. If he hasn’t released more returns, then by mid-October, this will be one of three main things the average American knows about Mitt Romney: that he’s rich, that he’s running for president, and that he won’t release his tax returns.

That will have to be devastating. And it will be something he brought completely on himself, either by refusing to release the returns or by doing whatever it is he did in the first place that he’s now hiding. My Beast colleague Peter Beinart is correct to write that how much Romney paid in taxes doesn’t have anything to do with the larger debate we’re having in this election about “whether the federal government should try to significantly regulate capitalism.” But it has everything to do with Romney’s character—his sense of entitlement, the Master-of-the-Universe-y aura of impatient superiority that was undoubtedly a great virtue in the corporate world but is very much the opposite in the civic one, and the weird insecurity that lurks underneath that veneer of über-confidence. And those things are very germane to what sort of president he’d be.

Hiding his tax returns is bad enough. But also hidden are the names of his bundlers, certain Salt Lake Olympic records, and records from his tenure as governor. That’s roughly ... oh, his entire career. It’s bad enough that he thinks he can make it to the White House in this fashion. But it’s worse that he wants to. Someone running for the presidency should be happy to share that information, especially when it’s your own father who blazed this particular trail in the first place.

The Obama campaign doesn’t seem to have planned on making character an issue. The Bain attacks were about qualifications, not character. But in these past three or four weeks, Romney has demonstrated, with America watching, that this is the issue with him. He doesn’t play it straight on anything. Voters can smell it on him like bad cologne, and the longer he digs in his heels on taxes, the greater the stink will grow.

[trotsky]

1. I wish I shared the writer's certainty.

three main things the average American knows about Mitt Romney: that he’s rich, that he’s running for president, and that he won’t release his tax returns. ... That will have to be devastating.

I don't think it will be. The conservative media will combat this by saying that Mitt is a self-made, successful man and it's none of our business and many (if not most) voters will lap it right up. They'll use proven Rovian methods to turn this around, making Mitt's weakness into a strength to use against the President. "Why is the President so jealous of Mitt Romney's success?" Etc.

Lame as hell but just watch, it will work. Don't know if it will work enough to get Rmoney elected, but I don't think it will be nearly as devastating as this writer thinks.

[Frustratedlady]

3. And the conservatives can't understand..

that what taxes Mitt doesn't pay, they do?

I can't see how anyone can defend Mitt for hiding information, I don't care if it's taxes, Bain actions or the issue with his dog. He simply can't be truthful or consistent.

[trotsky]

4. Part of it too, is the conservative myth...

that one day, if we can just get rid of these crazy liberal regulations and welfare and all that jazz, then THEY TOO will be wealthy like Willard and pay no taxes.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. More important

Companies that hide in these offshore locations have a history of laundering, relations to global crime and of course Iran.

[trotsky]

7. More things that the average American voter does not give a shit about.

Sadly.

[Betty Jo]

6. IT's NOT THE MONEY,IT'S THE COMPANIES

I've said it before,it's not how much Romney has paid or not paid,it's the companies that Mitty has hidden in his and his families blind trusts.HCA Hospital Corporation of America,Iranian National Oil, AMC,the second largest chain of cinema houses in the US,which Mitty sold to Daliwan-Wanda,a CHINESE company,the company that disposes of aborted fetuses,and a whole line-up of medical and DNA entities that call for a Robin Cook novel.It's not the money.it's the companies.The Daily Kos and Vanity Fair are filled with good documentation.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/06/1117325/-Romney-s-financial-ties-to-Iran-Chin...[link:http://|

[HereSince1628]

2. I agree the argument needs to shift away from the taxes per se

Although the missing tax records look to his opponents like a millstone around Mitt's neck, Mitt, nonetheless, is appearing to stay afloat with it hanging there. Indeed it's become something of a badge of courage for his imperturbable supporters.

He's taken this stand throughout his political career and gotten away with it. He certainly thinks he will once again.

Turning the Romney's stand on tax-records into an issue about the improprioty of the stand is better than the tax issue as the intransigence is plainly demonstrable.

Moreover, successfully showing that his stand is socially unacceptable is, in the end, the thing that would motivate release of the tax-records.