Don't you just hate it when a prophecy doesn't come true? All his life, Mitt's been on quest for the presidency, a role for which he was preordained. The GOP convention is just days away, and the nomination is all but final. Everything's falling into place. All he has to do is pick a vice president who can add a touch of humanity and street cred to the ticket, get through the debates unscathed, spend Sheldon Adelson's money on some more factually bereft attack ads, and step across the finish line to get his reward. What could possibly go wrong?
It can't be easy being preordained for greatness. If the forces of the universe really are aligned to favor Mitt's clear path to the presidency, they're certainly taking their sweet time moving things along. Given that he's spent decades and millions on this quest, Mitt has made remarkably little progress. It's as though the world simply doesn't recognize that it's his "turn", for Pete's sake.
Despised by members of his own party, by the press, by voters, and by the opposition party, Mitt tells us that we're simply envious of his wealth and success. With this single remark, Mitt has widened and deepened the already yawning abyss that - thankfully - separates him from most normal humans. No, Mitt, it's not envy that we feel. Far from it. Disgust, anger, even a smattering of pity, but certainly not envy.
There's a hell-hound on Mitt's trail, and it dogs him day and night. Mitt Simply Must Win this time, no matter what it takes, no matter what boundaries he must cross, no matter how many lies he has to tell, no matter how many previous positions he has to Etch-a-Sketch away, no matter how much of his own money (or other people's money) he must spend.
For her part, Ann's clearly on board with this prophecy thing, and she's counting the days until Mitt's coronation. She's going to chair the Women for Mitt coalition that will cement once and for all the already solid gender gap between Mitt and thinking women everywhere. For some reason, they simply cannot relate to this woman who sees the White House as a simple matter of entitlement and announces that she and Mitt will no longer be answering to "you people" and your petty little demands for tax returns.
Interestingly, Mitt's sons expressed reluctance about another run for the White House. Didn't they get the memo? What part of dynastic inevitability don't they understand? Or could they be smart enough to see the handwriting on the wall and rightly foresee that a Mitt denied his rightful place in history will be no fun around the house after the election? Since they're in their 30s and 40s with kids of their own, it's not as though they'd have to be living in the White House fishbowl.
So Mitt must soldier on alone, hounded by his obsessions, desperate to prove himself to an uncaring world that sees him as just another footnote in electoral history. Surely he didn't imagine that he'd be encountering such resistance, so many people and forces conspiring against him. That wasn't part of the prophecy (well, it might have been, but who reads the small print?)
Filled with umbrage and indignity, Mitt is pulling out all the stops. There is no lie or misrepresentation too egregious, no back-room deal too sleazy, no previous position immune to the possibility of retroactive revision.
Remember: this is a man who has systematically deleted much of his past including his e-mails and records as Governor of Massachusetts and any correspondence with his father. He's also subjected himself to stinging criticism from even his closest political allies by his past-the-point-of-reason refusal to release his tax returns or information on his foreign holdings or his wicked awesome IRA. Even the supposed highlights of his private-sector life at Bain Capital and on behalf of the Salt Lake City Olympics - achievements that he could have leveraged in his efforts to show himself as economically astute - are now off limits.
Stripping away every last vestige of his supposedly self-made-man success, he stands before us like the emperor, naked, and holding a small hand-lettered sign professing:
"I'm not Obama"
and wondering what in the world he has to do to make this gosh-darn prophecy come true. How much more must he endure? When will this persecution ever end?
The hell-hound, growing impatient, snarls:
"Keep moving, jackass."
and a cold wind rustles the trees that no longer seem anywhere close to being the right height.