Rmoney’s Leadership Skillz

Filed in National by on May 3, 2012

Gawker has a wonderful post that examines Mitt Romney’s leadership skills in the face of the Grenell resignation. You know, the leadership skills that Romney always says he has, yeah, those he didn’t display this week.

This might just be saucy, shabby sexual politics, but Romney’s pitch to the American people is “LEADERSHIP” and capable management. When Romney’s being charitable to Obama, he uses codewords to call him stupid (“in over his head”) while championing his own expertise. Given his campaign approach, it’s significant that the three natural responses to the Grenell matter are all negative:

  • Romney had to hire, hide and accept/”encourage” the resignation of a man who was a political liability because of his noxious tweets, which shows basic managerial incompetence.
  • Romney had to hire, hide and accept/”encourage” the resignation of a man who was a political liability because he was gay, which shows managerial incompetence because Grenell not only disclosed his man-love-bona fides, but Romney also somehow overlooked the fact that he represents the homophobia party.
  • Romney lacks a leader’s resolution, is willing to run from association with someone who served in the Bush administration and is willing to have his moneyed, lockstep electoral juggernaut stopped short and sent skittering rightward from some “Signs of Evil Countdown” evangelical radio meathead with a whopping 1,400 Twitter followers.

About the Author ()

A Dad, a husband and a data guru

Comments (3)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

  1. cassandra_m says:
    May 3, 2012 at 9:28 pm

    You could also note that RMoney lacks a leader’s resolution because he’s boxed himself into kowtowing to the worst elements of his party instead of leading them out of their bigoted wilderness.

  2. Jason330 says:
    May 4, 2012 at 12:07 am

    The media needs simple story lines, and ever since Bill Clinton criticized Sister Souljah in 1992, a candidate’s ability (or inability) to dictate norms of behavior to their base has been one of those easy story lines they look for.

  3. nemski says:
    May 4, 2012 at 6:54 am

    Ruth Marcus’ column paints two different images of a presidential candidate as a leader. The first in Bill Clinton in 1992 and the other is Mitt Romney in 2012. For a man that regular calls himself a leader, Romney has not shown any leadership skills over the last two weeks.

    Marcus recounts Bill Clinton attending a NAACP convention and calling out Sistah Souljah.

    For Clinton, rebuking the rap singer for comments suggesting that blacks should “kill white people” was less courageous than calculated.

    It was June 1992, with the general election looming and polls showing the Democrat running third against George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot. Clinton chose the moment — Jesse Jackson Jr.’s Rainbow Coalition conference, to which Sister Souljah had been invited — to stage his declaration of independence.

    Romney’s leadership on the other hand as been timid and soft.

    Romney’s calculus has been consistently the opposite: that the risk of alienating powerful party figures or constituencies exceeds the benefit of repositioning himself, if not in the reasonable center, then closer to it. His Sister Souljah deficit underscores both the extreme nature of the current Republican Party and Romney’s continuing tenuous position within it.

    This is a very good article about Romney’s inability to lead.

«
»