Devil in the details for Romney
WASHINGTON (CNN) — For Mitt Romney, the devil is in the details.
A few of his campaign trail anecdotes — especially those he relates while on the defensive — come complete with elements that pack an extra political punch, but sometimes seem to require a steady stream of qualifiers after the fact.
During his recent speech on faith, the former Massachusetts governor told his audience how he had witnessed his father, George Romney, marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Romney repeated the claim that his father, who was the governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, had marched with King on NBC’s Meet the Press last weekend, growing emotional as he discussed his own reaction when he learned that Mormon leadership had decided to allow black people to participate fully in church rites.
I’m not going to distance myself in any way from my faith, Romney told NBC’s Tim Russert. But you can see what I believed and what my family believed by looking at, at our lives. My dad marched with Martin Luther King. My mom was a tireless crusader for civil rights.
But Romney never did witness his father march with King, as the campaign now acknowledges.
Romney’s presidential campaign says that the elder Romney marched with the civil rights leader, that he told his sons he had, and that written accounts from the time back up the claim.
But experts quoted in a Boston Globe investigation this week concluded that the event never happened.
It’s a figure of speech, Romney said this week of the claim he’d witnessed his father and King together, like saying You know, I speak in the sense of ‘I saw my dad become president of American Motors.’ I wasn’t actually there when he became president of American Motors, but I saw him in the figurative sense of he marched with Martin Luther King.
It isn’t the first time Romney has been forced to back down from a convenient defense.
Guns have been a particular problem for him. Earlier this year, he told a New Hampshire voter: I’ve been a hunter pretty much all my life, but he admitted later that he did not own a gun or possess a hunting license, and had been hunting only twice in his life.
During Romney’s recent Meet the Press interview, he said that his gubernatorial bid had received a National Rifle Association endorsement — but later conceded that the group’s support had been limited to phone banking efforts, which is not an official endorsement.
That’s what happens in the course of a campaign, when everything you say gets jumped on, Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said Friday. Do you think every word that came out of your mouth this month was completely accurate? Can anyone’s speech stand up to that kind of scrutiny?
When campaign reporters pressed him on his King claims this week, Romney explained that he saw his father march with the civil rights leader in the figurative sense, but did not literally see the two men walk side by side.
The reference of seeing my father lead in civil rights, and seeing my father march with Martin Luther King, is in the sense of this figurative awareness of and recognition of his leadership, he said. I’ve tried to be as accurate as I can be. If you look at the literature or look at the dictionary, the term ’saw’ includes being aware of — in the sense I’ve described.
I’m an English literature major. When we say, ‘I saw the Patriots win the World Series,’ it doesn’t necessarily mean you were there, he said. (The Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 2007. The New England Patriots last won the Super Bowl in 2005.)
The explanation didn’t quite satisfy the media. But will it be enough for voters?
A CNN poll conducted earlier this month found that a quarter of New Hampshire’s Republicans found Romney the most believable candidate in the race — enough to give him a tie for the top spot in that category.
found here.
mike says:
December 22nd, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Well…
POLITICO
By: Mike Allen
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7524.htm
Shirley Basore, 72, says she was sitting in the hairdresser’s chair in wealthy Grosse Pointe, Mich., back in 1963 when a rumpus started and she discovered that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and her governor, George Romney, were marching for civil rights — right past the window.
With the cape still around her neck, Basore went outside and joined the parade.
“They were hand in hand,” recalled Basore, a former high-school English teacher. “They led the march. We all swung our hands, and they held their hands up above everybody else’s.”
She remembered the late governor as “extremely handsome.”
Until this week, that was just a vivid memory for a sweet retiree who now lives in Pompano Beach, Fla.
But Basore’s memory became important this week when news accounts questioned the recollections of the late Michigan governor’s son, Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor.
News stories suggested that Romney was exaggerating. It turns out that he may not have attended the Grosse Pointe march, but it certainly happened.
The campaign posted citations quoting one author as writing that “George Romney made a surprise appearance in his shirt sleeves and joined the parade leaders.”
Stephen Hess and David S. Broder also wrote about the march in their 1967 book, “The Republican Establishment: The Present and Future of the G.O.P.”
Basore said she was very angry about how the issue has been covered on cable television.
“This very arrogant guy on TV questioned Mitt Romney, and I marched with them,” Basore said. “I hope that the campaign demands an apology. I want him to publicly apologize to me. That was a personal insult, and an insult to Mitt Romney.”
Basore said she called the campaign, and the campaign supplied her contact information.
Another witness, Ashby Richardson, 64, of Massachusetts gave the campaign a similar account.
“I’m just appalled that the news picks this stuff up and say it didn’t happen,” Richardson, now a data-collection consultant, said by phone. “The press is being disingenuous in terms of reporting what actually happened. I remember it vividly. I was only 15 or 20 feet from where both of them were.”