Father, not like son: George Romney was a pathbreaker in public disclosure
Pants on fire!
DIANE SAWYER: Moving on. President Obama threw down a kind of gauntlet to you over the weekend. And he said, "Release 12 years of your tax returns. I'm releasing them. Release 12 years. If you have nothing to hide why not release 12 years as your father did?"
MITT ROMNEY: Well, the president is going to try and do everything possible to divert from the attention being focused upon his record as president and the failure of his economic policies. So he's going to try and make this campaign about the fact that I've been successful, that I've made a lot of money. So he wants to be able to get all the details on each year and how much money I made this year and that year. I'm not going to get into that.
I'm going to focus on getting America strong again. And we've released all the information required by law and then some. And both John Kerry and John McCain and—and President Obama—they released two years of records. I'm happy to release two years of records—and that's plenty for people to understand how I paid my taxes and the fact that I've been highly successful.
Sorry, Mitt. You're not running against John McCain or John Kerry, and President Obama has released every return since the year 2000, not just two.
I'm sure PolitiFact would say this is "mostly true" because two out of three ain't bad, but Romney is smart enough to know that he wasn't right about President Obama. I mean, Diane Sawyer (who deserves congratulations for making this list) even explicitly told him that Obama had released a dozen years! And yet just a few seconds later, off Mitt goes, reflexively making shit up as he tries to sell his candidacy.
It's that kind of dishonesty that makes it impossible to believe him when he promises that he's not a tax crook. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. Maybe he's not even hiding anything embarrassing, though I kind of doubt that. But one thing's for sure: when he says he's "beyond reproach," I'm not going to take his word on it. I want to see the proof.