The other day I quoted the poem about the little man on the stair who wasn’t there.  It seems that it applies to Mr. Romney even more than I thought.  Maureen Dowd’s column yesterday in the New York Times describes the extraordinary lengths he has gone to in his effort to keep his activities a secret, both as the so-called rescuer of the Seattle Olympics and as governor of Massachusetts.  Would a person who has nothing to hide destroy all those electronic records and spend $10,000 to purchase the hard drives he used?  You would think that a man so intent on achieving the highest honors would want to preserve a record for the sake of his own history – unless of course, there were shady dealings and lies hidden in the emails.

If we, the voters, are blind enough go for this invisible man in the upcoming election, we will be voting in a totally unknown quantity, an unsubstantial being who happens to be very rich and believes in nothing but the almighty dollar.  We will deserve whatever disaster follows.

For a man who supposedly spent time being a missionary in France, he certainly hasn’t learned the art of diplomacy. Instead he comes across as something of a condescending, haughty boor, allowing aids to speak of the “anglo-saxon” alliance, and then insulting his British hosts by being disconcerted at the shortfall in security personnel. He’s not as uncouth as George (“Yo Blair!”), but the attitude of superiority seems the same. It’s certainly not the kind of polished performance you’d expect from someone with his much flaunted experience. The Anglo-saxon remark is a slam at everyone who isn’t descended from that particular group of people. Do they realize what a minority they are in the real world? Do they understand that these anglo-saxons didn’t make America’s greatness? That there were always those others, the Irish, the Germans, the Dutch, the Poles, the Jews, the Latin Americans, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Filipinos, the Africans, and all those countless others who came to our shores and contributed their energy and brains, and ingenuity to make us what we are.

Aren’t rich people expected to have good manners?