Jed made a little funny in his report on the latest PPP results in Illinois. Captioned a picture of a smiling Mitt with, "Wheee! My Daddy issues are about to be resolved!"
Brief chuckle. Until you think about it.
As the punditosphere endlessly yammers, Mitt has offered no compelling reason for his candidacy. Depending on his primary rival of the moment, his chief argument has been, "Rick sucks!" "Newt sucks!" and, back in the mists of time, "Herman Sucks!"
All of which are perfectly valid points, but don't offer the listener any reason to believe Mitt himself does not suck. Aside from crapping on his opponents like a terrified setter on a car roof, he has given no reason to vote for him other than his love of money and surreal musings on arboreal stature.
In truth, Mitt can't really articulate his chief reason for wanting to be president of the United States, because it matters to no one but himself: "I'll show you, dad!"
By all accounts, Mitt Romney sincerely believed his father was the right man for the presidency in 1964, and with good reason. A calm, moderate Republican governor, an able business administrator, the senior Romney would probably have made a reasonably good chief executive, and certainly a more palatable nominee than Barry Goldwater. Mitt was George's biggest booster, and his father's loss to the Goldwater wing was, to the younger Romney, not simply a bit of bad luck, but a miscarriage of justice.
Which, it appears, he is determined to redress by his own election.
Today, on the anniversary of a horrid, needless war, for which America's leader could offer no better reason than, "He tried to kill my dad!" perhaps it's a good time to reflect on whether vindicating or besting one's pere is the best reason to lead the free world.
Because once these Oedipal Wrecks achieve their prime goal, be it a cushy chair behind the H.M.S. Resolute desk or Saddam's sixguns framed on the wall, they're satisfied, and more than happy to turn over the day-to-day drudgery of governance to those who put them on the perch.
And those people generally have far different goals than making daddy proud.