Mitt Romney has had it up to here with people second-guessing his foreign investments! (Scott Audette/Reuters)
No, that's not a trick question. Yes, the answer is that easy. Of course, it's Mitt Romney.
According to the manager of his trust, Mitt Romney's Swiss bank account wasn't an exercise in tax avoidance—rather, it was a hedge against a decline in the dollar. I'm not qualified to say whether or not his explanation is the full truth, but it certainly doesn't provide evidence that Mitt Romney hates America. Obviously, an investment that bets on the decline of the dollar might not sound good, but when you have as much money as he does, you're going to end up placing bets that might not be great soundbites for a campaign. In substantive terms, Romney is going to have a much bigger problem explaining why Bain profited from destroying companies than he will have explaining this.
But while the mere existence of the Swiss bank account doesn't by itself raise questions about Mitt Romney's loyalty to America, it provides one hell of a way to respond to Romney when he engages his his now-familiar attacks on President Obama's loyalty. Despite all the attention paid to Newt Gingrich's "food-stamp" line, Mitt Romney himself is no stranger to the hate card. His preferred formulation: that President Obama doesn't believe in American exceptionalism, that he seeks to "poison the American spirit", and that he wants to turn America into Europe and "keep us from being one nation under God."
Of course, Mitt Romney is nothing like that at all. He's just the kind of guy who bets on America's decline to protect his own ass.