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| Mitt and Ann: The Real Deal |
My thoughts on Ann
Romney last night
Red dress, white skin, blue backdrop—you are America!
Sashays her way onto
the stage— no sign of nerves, so far so good
Bends forward, giddy and giggling, hands folded between her thighs— demonstrates youthful exuberance
Attractive woman-- she’s how old?
Grandmother of 18—grandmother of 18? are you kidding me? this is great!!
I guess all good things must come to an
end. I am not about to assert that
speaking in public in this kind of forum is not incredibly difficult—particularly
when the stakes are so high; particularly when she was asked to hit a homerun
her first time at bat; particularly when she had the unenviable task of
humanizing her husband.
What we learned from Ann is that a life
of privilege can be a very boring one, particularly if one is precluded from
going to those places where most memories are made—vacation homes, stables,
private clubs. Not to delve into this surplus,
she was left with what we heard last night—nothing wrapped up and tied in exaggeration,
generalization, and patronization.
Ann wanted to correct a misconception
that hers was a storybook marriage. In
fact--she was adamant-- hers and Mitt’s was and is a “real” marriage. As evidence of this real marriage, she
offered up the presence of five ornery boys and two diseases. Really?
I was hoping that she might get more specific, you know examples of
those kinds of things humans go through: struggling to hold down two jobs so that
the family can pay the rent after losing their first and only home to foreclosure;
trying to finance a new car after the Plymouth Reliant K car died; maxing out
two credit cards to pay the bills; taking care of two elderly parents and having
to supplement their social security income; continuously finding creative ways
of robbing Peter to pay Paul in order to pay for Christmas and birthday gifts,
maybe piano lessons, maybe a travel soccer team.
Things that are part of the typical middle
class family life.
But the young Romney couple was often
forced to eat tuna fish and pasta and write on a wobbly desk. Ouch!!
And what about the time Mitt and a few
of his wealthy friends were sweating over what business they should use their
parents’ money to start. There must have
been moments during that trying time when Mitt (full of that sense of humor
that Ann told us about) eased the
tension by joking, “Hey, what if we had to get real jobs?"
Again, I was expecting a few more
examples-- you know those darn human ones:
all those spats about money; having to start
paying back all those student loans; she’s pregnant, but can they afford it;
she’s pregnant again, and they still can’t afford it; those rats in their first
apartment; moving again and again, lugging that ugly furniture they got at a second-hand
store in and out of another U-Haul; the guilt they felt dropping off their 8
month old at day care for the first time; thinking that college was supposed to
have guaranteed better jobs than these; first rearranging those dreams, then
cutting them back to within an inch of reality only to discover that the reality
is the dream, whittled down to those elements that really matter—her beauty, her
habit of personifying almost everything, his hair and sense of humor; her fabulously
formed neck and those shoulders, packing up the kids for kindergarten, trying to
enjoy those crazy birthday parties at the bowling alley, making an eternity out
of those two hours when the two kids are actually out of the house at the same
time, looking at those stars they can never name together, presenting and
lovingly accepting a poem in place of a ring.
And then realizing that life may be all about pruning that chunky, awkward,
and poorly located (so many leaves to rake and pull out from the gutters) but
beautiful tree they have, and not adding yet another to an already vast arboretum.
Oops.
I got carried away. That was the
wrong Ann.
But she’s the one who brought it
up. It was Ann Romney who was going to
show us how tough the “real” marriage can be. Unfortunately, you cannot write “Paycheck to
Paycheck Survivors” when your life reads “The Success of Privilege” So I am the one left holding the Romney
storybook-- Ann as a Disney Princess; Mitt wearing white leotards and riding a
white horse. Ann and Mitt had hiccups
along the way, but these do not play out well when one is trying desperately to
stage a human drama: climax needs
conflict; resolution requires recognition; and survival requires struggle.
The point is that Ann failed to humanize
Mitt (and herself) because she tried to reinvent Mitt’s humanity (and hers). And to cast herself or her husband or their
marriage as a “one of us” kind of experience simply does not work. In the end, her “real” marriage was the real
fiction.
With 20/20 hindsight, I am prepared to offer
up the kind of thing Ann might have said:
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| "And we ate tuna fish...TUNA FISH!" |
“I love my husband and my children and my
grandchildren and this country. We’ve
had struggles but they were insignificant compared with what most Americans
face every day in their struggles not to succeed but just to survive. For most people, learning to survive is the
closest they will ever come to our kind of success. No one I know, none of our friends, have ever
had to struggle that way, so I am, of course, going on hearsay.”
“Hey, America: do I look my age? Of course not. Three words:
serenity, spa, salon. Neither
Mitt nor I have ever had the kind of worry that puts those deep wrinkles in
your soul, those that inevitably spread to your face. And there are always those weekly
appointments at the salon—massages, pedicures, waxing, Botox, cucumbers and
ginger and avocadoes, O my! And don’t
forget daily work-outs at the spa.”
“We have five sons but we could have
afforded 50. We had the money to send
them to the best private schools never once saddling them with any student loan
debt. They began life well up on that
proverbial ladder of success that allowed them the privilege of having as many
children as they liked. And now I am the
proud grandmother, not of one or two, but of eighteen.”
“When we were first married we may have
eaten tuna fish once in a while, but more often than not we ate out and never
at a fast food restaurant. Our biggest concern
was what to do with all his daddy’s money.
And Mitt and I have shared so many lovely times together at private
clubs, at cocktail parties (where we only pretended to drink), horseback
riding, summer homes, house keepers, beautiful furnishings, wonderful
anniversary gifts; and in place of that one wobbly desk, one extraordinary
antique desk used by Brigham Young himself where Mitt has sat many a night over
the last several years of his unemployment with me leaning right behind him contemplating
how best to turn 20 million into 40. I
remember one time we gave up in frustration and collapsed onto our sofas, drowning
our sorrows in memories of more prosperous days and root beer floats.”
“We are privileged. I can hide my age but I can’t hide that. But Mitt and I want you to be kind of privileged
too. Don’t be afraid of our
success. Don’t settle. At least tell your children that they can be
Romneys one day. Maybe you will never be
as privileged as we are (you certainly will never have the time and money to
run for President)—but I am here to tell you that if you elect my husband as
the next President of the United States, he will get the government out of your
way so that you may think you can get to where we are now. And that is what America is all about isn’t
it: dreaming you can when you can’t;
thinking you are what you’re not; and becoming what you never were, are, or ever
will be.”
“I remember a school musical our oldest
was in – The Music Man. In that wonderful slice of Americana, an
entire group of young people, none of whom ever had a single music lesson,
suddenly and miraculously became a wonderful marching band, simply by using the
“think method”.
“Mitt and I think that thinking will
work for all of you too, the less- or underprivileged, the whole colorful lot of
you. And one day with Mitt’s help, you
will write your own storybook, heavy on pictures, light on words.”
“God Bless You, and God Bless the United
States of America!”
One final thought: why should we care that Mitt will work harder
for us so that we do not have to work so hard. I thought this was all about rugged individualism. Sorry Mitt!
We don’t need your help, thank you.
We created our success, not you!
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