It’s awfully tough for a politician who forces a dog to the ride on the roof of the family car to live it down. In her column today, Kathleen Parker extends some spirited advice to Mitt Romney, encouraging him to ignore pundits who assume he can’t win, but she adds this gem:
This is when friends are supposed to intervene and remind you of who you are. The problem is, a candidate doesn’t have friends. He has advisers, consultants, contributors and All Those People out there — Everyday Americans with their cellphones pointing, snapping and clicking. You need them to love you, but it’s not your nature to ingratiate yourself. The whole process is exhausting and humiliating and — can we be frank? — monumentally stupid at times. Most of the time.
If you’re lucky, you have a good dog. Never mind.
Ouch.
Incidentally, Rebecca Leber noted Romney mocking clean energy at a campaign event in Ohio earlier this week, telling voters, “We all like wind and solar, but you can’t drive a car with a windmill on it.” It’s an intellectually lazy line — Romney surely knows better on substantive grounds, and he’s just pandering to ignorance — but the rhetoric also invites an obvious retort: “The candidate infamous for the dog-on-car road trip could have used a better example.”
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