January 31,
2015 GAIL COLLINS
Mitt Romney is
out! And we hardly had time to adjust to the idea that he was in.
''I've decided
it is best to give other leaders in the party the opportunity to become our
next nominee,'' Romney said in one of the least private conference calls in the
history of communication.
Well, that was
certainly gracious. Although a lot of Republicans thought they had an
opportunity to become the next nominee whether Mitt was in the scrimmage or
not. Really, he didn't seem to be scaring off anybody. There appear to be
thousands of candidates, even if you don't count the ones who are feigning an
interest in the presidential race in order to promote their cheesy television
shows. (This week on ''Amazing America,'' Sarah Palin visited Ted Nugent on his
ranch in Texas. Meanwhile, on ''Celebrity Apprentice,'' Donald Trump fired the
woman who has a reality series about her eight kids. Celebrities just aren't
what they used to be.)
So many
candidates, but, sadly, very few good pet stories. The future holds no chances
to point out that Romney once drove to Canada with the family Irish setter
strapped to the roof of the station wagon. And the other animal options are
pretty slim. Mike Huckabee used to fry squirrels in a popcorn popper, but that
was back in college. Jeb Bush says he's very fond of manatees, though I don't
believe he keeps one in his home.
Ted Cruz recently
tweeted a picture of himself posing with what looked like a rug made from a
dead, and endangered, tiger. Rand Paul confided to Vogue that he hates
squirrels. Maybe we can get a squirrel theme going here.
But about
Romney's dropout announcement. It was great, in the sense that within a few
short minutes he managed to remind the world of everything that was terrible
about Mitt Romney, Presidential Candidate.
Nobody was
really expecting to have a Mitt conversation this year. He had famously told
The Times's Ashley Parker that his response to any thought of another
presidential run was: ''Oh, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no.''
Political withdrawal, it seemed, had done him a world of good. Guy really knew
how to communicate.
Then a few
weeks ago, Presidential Mitt suddenly popped back up. Romancing his old donors,
reassembling his team, visiting the Republican National Committee. This week,
he was at Mississippi State, tearing into Hillary Clinton's foreign policy
record and unveiling his new message about fighting income inequality. On
Thursday, he was twittering a response to a jibe by the president. (''Mr.
Obama, wonder why my concern about poverty? The record number of poor in your
term, and your record of failure to remedy.'')
And then, on
Friday, he dropped out of the race with a conference call to his supporters in
which he insisted that he could win the nomination and bragged about polls that
showed he was practically the only person in the race. (''One poll out just
today shows me gaining support and leading the next closest contender by nearly
2 to 1.'')
Plus, Romney
said, ''I would have the best chance of beating the eventual Democratic
nominee. ...'' At this point, it seemed that he was going to have to announce
that he had just discovered he only had six months to live. There was no other
possible reason he could be depriving his party of all that presidential power.
But, no,
Romney said he was making an abrupt U-turn because there might be somebody out
there who was even more stupendous and he did not want to get in the way of
said candidate's emergence.
That's our
Mitt. The man who dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination in 2008
not because he lost too many primaries, but because ''I simply cannot let my
campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.'' (That would be the
Democratic Party.)
Romney has
mutated a lot in the time we've known him, but the one clear, shining quality
that never wavers is his complete inability to make a strong, clear statement. This is the
guy who tackled the critical issue of illegal immigration by promoting the
concept of ''self-deportation.'' The man who, when confronted with the
dog-on-the-roof saga, claimed that Seamus the setter ''likes fresh air.''
And, on
Friday, Romney concluded his most recent change of course by predicting that
people would ask him if he could ever possibly change his mind. The answer, he
said, was: ''That seems unlikely.''
Truly, if you
follow up an eleven-no refusal to run with a sudden leap into the fray that
does not even survive the month of January, the least you could do is tell your
supporters this is absolutely the end of the line.
For all his
faults, there are a lot of candidates in the Republican scrimmage who would
make far worse presidents than Mitt Romney. Still, it's sort of a relief to see
him go.
Although I
will miss that dog story.
