Mitt Romney is tone deaf when it comes to understaing the role of government in a democracy. He views it as similar to running a corporation, when in fact government is not at all the same as running a corporation. Governer Romney's comments about Big Bird highlight this fact.
Read on...
I saw this letter posted on someone else's blog (http://m.yahoo.com/...):
Cecelia's (8 years old) handwritten letter reads as follows:
"I saw you on the debate last night and you said you would cut off PBS kids with Sesame Street on it. It was my favorite show on Earth. But now I'm 8 years old. When I grow up, I'm going to get married and I want my kids to watch it. So do not cut it off. You find something else to cut off! Don't hurt little kids. They need Sesame Street where they can learn from it. Save Big Bird and his friends."
Now, I'm not going to comment on the authenticity of the letter writer but here is the problem Mitt has. There is a reason that Mitt is personally successful. He can separate the emotion from the logic. If closing a business makes good sense and it will make him money, Mitt will do it. The fact that people will lose their jobs and livelihoods is collateral damage. "They'll survive but it's not my problem" or something like that would be his thinking.
Government is not a business. You can't separate the two. No matter how much business sense it makes in making one decision or another, government can't stop thinking about the people they govern. That's why it's called "government" and not "corporation".
So cutting Big Bird off may make perfect financial sense when you're running huge, unbelievably high deficits but that why governing is so hard. Your role as government doesn't end with the decision to cutoff the funding. You must also solve, who gets disenfranchised by the move and how do you fix that. Mitt doesn't get the second part. This is why his statement about Big Bird came so easy for him but the backlash will come back to haunt him.
I truly believe Mitt Romney will lose this election because of his Big Bird statement...and you won't understand why.