Let me finish tonight with this.
I still want to see Mitt Romney’s tax returns. It’s one thing not to meet his beloved father’s standard for disclosure, I think he ought to at least belly up to Richard Nixon’s.
The only real question voters have to think about here is why, with all the pressure on him, Mitt is keeping those returns a secret—at least to us. His accountants and lawyers know what’s he’s paid, know where he’s made his money, where he’s invested it and under what terms and why. This little caucus of people know the facts. Why not us?
You see this isn’t some family secret, some old story the family has a perfect right to keep to itself. It’s not about some failing on some family member’s part, some tiff between some uncle and aunt. It’s not about a problem a child might have had.
No. It’s simply business information. Isn’t this guy running on how he’s done business? Isn’t that his resume? Didn’t he make a fortune in business, enough money to get out there, drop everything and run for the country’s highest office? Won’t historians want to know how he pulled it off? Shouldn’t the voters who may put him into the history books as one of our presidents? Shouldn’t they know so they can figure out the guy’s track record, his methods, his attitude toward his citizenship. Romney probably figures—and the people around him are probably consoling him with this—that he’s outrun the foxes on this, that the more time that passes, the better he can evade the demands. But I wonder…Mitt Romney is hiding those tax returns for ten of the past 12 years. There’s a reason why he’s doing it and it just may fit with what he’s been caught saying about the have’s and the have-nots, what he really thinks of the duty of Americans to pay their fair share, especially those who in Mitt’s favorite word have achieved “success.”
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