The Bully Who Wants To Be President

(Image is from the website of Vanity Fair.)

Yesterday, Willard Mitt Romney issued one of those famous Republican non-apology apologies. He told Fox News' Brian Kilmeade, "Back in high school, I did some dumb things, and if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize for that. I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school, and some might have gone too far, and for that I apologize. I don't remember that incident." What was he talking about? Here is how the Washington Post reports it:

Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.


“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.


A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.


The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. Four of them — Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal — spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be named. . .


“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”


“It was a hack job,” recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.”


“He was just easy pickins,” said Friedemann, then the student prefect, or student authority leader of Stevens Hall, expressing remorse about his failure to stop it.


The incident transpired in a flash, and Friedemann said Romney then led his cheering schoolmates back to his bay-windowed room in Stevens Hall.


Friedemann, guilt ridden, made a point of not talking about it with his friend and waited to see what form of discipline would befall Romney at the famously strict institution. Nothing happened.

Does that sound like a "prank" or some good-natured "hijinks" to you? To me it sounds a lot more like a serious incident of homophobic bullying -- and I don't for a minute believe Romney doesn't remember it (although I can understand why he wants others to think that). That was not the only "prank", but it does seem to be the most significant.

Now some of you may be thinking that "boys will be boys", and Romney grew up and stopped his bullying behavior. I disagree. First, this was not a harmless prank, but a mean-spirited action that shows Romney didn't care for the feelings of fellow students. Second, I think his actions as an adult show he is still a mean-spirited bully. Hasn't he, just in the last few days, made it clear that he believes gays/lesbians don't deserve the same rights as other Americans?

And consider his actions while at Bain Capital. It didn't bother him at all to take control of a company, bleed it dry, lay off thousands of workers, and then toss that company on the dump-heap -- something he did repeatedly. He wasn't joking when he said, "I like to fire people." He enjoys making money off the suffering of others.

And consider the policies he wants to impose on America. He supports the Ryan Plan -- which would abolish Medicare and Medicaid, cut benefits (or privatize) Social Security, slash social programs that help to house, feed, and educate hurting Americans, and cut EPA funds to clean up our water and air. And he would do this so he and his rich buddies can have huge new tax cuts (even though he's already paying a smaller rate than most in the middle class). He really believes that the rich are special and shouldn't have to follow the same rules as all other Americans.

Electing Willard Mitt Romney as president would be a serious mistake. He was a bully as a youth, and he's still a bully.