This two hour production was aired on Wednesday 9 October, 2012. It was a thorough look at the two men. I was not comforted.
Romney emerged from this portrait as a self obsessed businessman who wants the presidency as a prize, a symbol of accomplishment in a life dedicated to personal accomplishment and devotion to a church that he avoids discussing. He has a very exalted view of himself as does his wife. In one revealing incident recounted in the production, Romney and his wife met with a group of Iowa Republicans in Boston just after he left the State House. One of the Iowans asked hard questions. Ann Romney was so incensed at this that she rose, left the room without a word and did not return. What does this say of the imperial presidency that might emerge from a Romney victory? The tale of his always shifting policy positions makes it clear that he is through and through a businessman. Policy positions mean nothing in business. Only profits have meaning in business. If you think that you know what a President Romney might do in a crisis with regard to any issue, you are probably wrong. In any situation he will sum up his personal "balance sheet" and act on that basis.
President Obama may not be strong enough physically and emotionally to suffer the "blows" that would be his portion in another four year term. Look how much the man has aged in the last four. His road to power was a tortured path in which he survived and prospered by his wits as he moved from one elite eductional institution to another in search of identity. Listenng to him speak to the camera as president of the Harvard Law Review is revealing. IMO, at that point he was still a white man in a somewhat black skin and his black colleagues on the Review thought the same. His body language, diction and vocabulary selection were not "black" at all. It took his deliberate "voyage" into the bosom of his wife's family to achieve what is at least a plausible public persona as a black American, rather than just another mainstream American. If he is elected, Republican obstructionism will continue unabated. He is a sensitive, intelligent soul. He looks exhausted, used up. pl
