After reading multiple articles on the response to the tapes that were recently leaked and from the content of those tapes as well, a question occurred to me this morning.
What is motivating Romney to try to become President?
I’ve thought a great deal about the idea of living what I call a generous life. Not just generous with your time and money, but in your thoughts, how you perceive things, how you think of others, and in what you want to accomplish with your actions. For me this means, in part, trying to think the best of others, assume good intent until proven otherwise.
An important thing to me is why people do what they do, what motivates them. What are they trying to accomplish? Is their motivation generous, or selfish?
As an example, think of people who choose to become teachers or police officers. What motivated them? The best of them are motivated to try to make the world a better place. The best teachers are trying to share what they know, get those ‘ah ha!’ moments from their students. They derive enjoyment from seeing growth and learning in their classrooms.
But there are some teachers who are not motivated by those things. Their enjoyment derives more from the power they exercise, the feeling of being superior to their charges. I think most people have run into these types. There is a smugness and a self-congratulatory air about these types, and their classrooms are more about them showing off than about elucidating their students.
You see something similar in police officers. Those who are there to protect the community, uphold the law, are fair and take personal pride in that. And then there are those who feed off of the power, enjoy using it over people. My intuition tells me these are the ones that are more likely to be brutal and biased. These are people who really shouldn’t be cops.
I would say up to this point I thought perhaps Romney had good intent in his pursuit of the Presidency, but I would say this tape has convinced me otherwise. Not that he has bad intent in particular, but that his desire to be president is driven from selfishness rather than altruism.
Why does Romney want to be President?
Romney is motivated to become President by what he will gain for himself and his investors (I use this term deliberately) not by what he can do for our country as a whole. Which to my mind is how things worked at Bain as well. Romney is basically planning on operating as he always has, and will execute the job of the Presidency in that way as well.
This is not the kind of motivation you want behind a person running for the Presidency. And this is what ultimately makes Romney unfit for the job.
I suppose this isn’t a surprise to most, but I felt like it all really just crystalized for me with what’s happened over the past few days. This is my take away from his write off of 47% of the country.