To be honest, I was a bit worried when rumors began circulating yesterday that birther Donald Trump would endorse Newt Gingrich. Trump is radioactive for a host of reasons. He's a grand-stander, he's a complete flake, loose cannon, and he has some character issues. Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he will say anything to get ratings, including chase down those pesky imaginary varmints usually left to the Ron Paul fringe of conspiracy theory-land.
Trump is a perfect fit for Willard "Mitt" Romney, and that he has endorsed Mitt should be seen as a serious - but telling - liability to the Romney campaign. It reveals just so much that the pair has in common, which is all of the above. In addition to being a grand-stander, flake, and loose cannon, Mitt Romney also shares a similar lack in personal moral character: Romney
abused his dog, is
connected to physical, even sexual abuse of teens, and ignored national security officials with respect to the dangers of
doing business with a Pentagon-designated Chinese espionage front group. Romney will also
say anything to get elected -
even flip on 17 of his supposedly dearest-held core beliefs. I guess you could say that Mitt Romney's a bit of a front group himself. Whether taking care of the family pet, watching over children or looking after the national security of the United States, Mitt Romney can't handle the responsibility.
Trump is likely to be an
ESTJ while Romney is likely the
ISTJ personality type, according to the
Myers-Briggs personality type assessment. This explains their sense of connectedness and probably also suggests Trump is the more dominant member of their relationship. Trump is more likely also the more intelligent of the two, although that has not ameliorated Trump's flakiness. Both the ESTJ and ISTJ have many strengths that lend themselves to administrative tasks, but their weaknesses include close-mindedness, resistance to change even when change is warranted, a bizarre view of sex as a service to be rendered to them but not reciprocated, emotional detachment and lack of appropriate sympathy, putting their agendas ahead of the people they impact, and
something else:
Under stress, ISTJs may fall into "catastrophe mode", where they see nothing but all of the possibilities of what could go wrong. They will berate themselves for things which they should have done differently, or duties which they failed to perform. They will lose their ability to see things calmly and reasonably, and will depress themselves with their visions of doom.
Indeed, that Meghan McCain-like
prissy petulance has come shining through on many occasions for Romney. Charles Krauthammer outlined one example in October:
But the main event was the scripted Rick Perry attack on Romney, reprising the old charge of Romney hiring illegal immigrants. Perry's face-to-face accusation of rank hypocrisy had the intended effect. From the ensuing melee emerged a singularity: a ruffled Romney, face flushed, voice raised.
The presidency is a serious and highly stressful job that includes coping with a constantly changing landscape domestically and internationally. One needs not belabor that and indeed, we have had ISTJ presidents in the past; most notably, George Washington, as seems to be widely believed.
To be sure, there are many strengths as well as weaknesses associated with this personality type - as with all personality types - but Romney appears to evince many of the worst. Here is another assortment of the negative traits one can expect from an ISTJ of weaker character (
PDF): "Spontaneity in the SJ tends to be suppressed, although when fatigued or under stress, the SJ can erupt into a temper tantrum, use biting sarcasm, or even, in rare instances, attempt to make a point through violence."
George Washington spent many years developing the character, depth, and self-awareness necessary to understand what it took to be a visionary leader with a good moral compass. Likewise, George H.W. Bush is likely also an ISTJ, and while lacking the imagination necessary to be a great president, he was not entirely a bad one, although he was able to better perform his duties in the afterglow of Ronald Reagan. But Bush also spent many years developing the discipline to blunt some of his weaknesses perhaps to a much greater extent than Romney has chosen to. Indeed, Mitt Romney has squandered his many years
chasing varmints, telling voters what they wanted to hear and doing anything it took to pad his résumé, as well as mistreating pets and associating himself closely with those who mistreat children. And yet, Mitt Romney tries to point his crooked finger at his betters in order to project his erratic and and unreliable qualities thereon. Mitt Romney is a hypocrite.
Romney and Trump both remind America of the things most in need of repair in our popular culture and in our government. Romney's full-throated support and enlargement the Massachusetts nanny state was without question in large measure responsible for Massachusetts being 47th nationally on job-creation. Romney's vociferous support for abortion went far beyond passive acceptance; part of Romneycare included taxpayer funding for abortions, even minors, and even in cases overriding parental consent - Romney is on record endorsing all of it. There is little chance he will work to repeal Obamacare, for which Romneycare was the prototype. In fact, Romney and his team who designed it consulted President Obama to develop Obamacare, and President Obama was
very grateful. Really, what part of Obamacare would Mitt Romney repeal? Not the individual mandate: that's in Romneycare. Not the death panel,
that's in Romneycare, too:
SECTION 41. Notwithstanding any general or special law to the contrary, the executive office of health and human services, in consultation with the health care quality and cost council, commission on end-of-life care established by section 480 of chapter 159 of the Acts of 2000, and the Betsy Lehman Center for Patient Safety and the Reduction of Medical Errors, shall convene an expert panel on end-of-life care for patients with serious chronic illnesses. The panel shall investigate and study health care delivery for these patients and the variations in delivery of such care among health care providers in the commonwealth. For the purposes of this investigation and study, "health care providers" shall mean facilities and health care professionals licensed to provide acute inpatient hospital care, outpatient services, skilled nursing, rehabilitation and long-term hospital care, home health care and hospice services. The panel shall identify best practices for end-of-life care, including those that minimize disparities in care delivery and variations in practice or spending among geographic regions and hospitals, and shall present recommendations for any legislative, regulatory, or other policy changes necessary to implement its recommendations. (Chapter 305 Section 41)
Likewise, there is little chance Romney would repeal the Obama administration's decision to force religious institutions to violate the conscience
by forcing them to "provide all employees access to health insurance providing artificial contraception, including abortifacients and sterilization services such as vasectomies and tubal ligations." We know this because while governor, Mitt Romney compelled Catholic hospitals to
provide abortion services.
Not only is the single-most economically destructive and most expensive piece of legislation in US history Obamacare - and the same can be said for Massachusetts with Romneycare - but it is also the single most destructive of personal liberty and the right to life, thus rendering both among the most immoral pieces of legislation in our history. In point of fact, Obamacare threatens to take over 1/5 of the US economy, and Romneycare has been a cancer of similar proportions in his home state. For both, Mitt Romney has little concern about repealing.
Meanwhile, anti-science Mitt Romney wishes America saw him as smarter than the scientists at NASA. Mitt makes his pronouncements as if stuck in the mud like some regressive troll, as he promises to fire anyone who dares to have the vision to take us back out into space - even as China makes plans to build a base on the moon - were somehow anything but the broken, Old World manner of thinking to which America has been the shining rebuttal. Would the non-motor-savvy Romney also have fired anyone who kept talking of replacing the carriage with the automobile? Would the non-chemist Romney have threatened to fire Alexander Fleming before he had the chance to invent Penicillin because the idea of using mold to stop infections seemed absurd on its face? Clearly, anti-science Romney speaks of a great many things about which he knows nothing. Or to put it in the kindest possible light as Reagan had, "Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so."
Not only is Romney a liberal, but a flake and a hypocrite also. On one hand, we have Newt Gingrich, a historian with a Ph.D. and endless experience in national security and policy formulation and as part of the Reagan Revolution and the revolution of 1994 that brought us four consecutive years of a balanced budget. On the other, we have messy Mitt, trolling the interwebs for quote sites with neat-sounding quotes that
may or may not be accurately attributed to the one purported to have made them. Stable? Real? Mitt is a hollow casing, a
plastic fruit;
Mitt is a flake. Really, who else
praises Hezbollah's healthchare system? That's ground even Sheila Jackson Lee dare not tread (although
Obama does stand by his Muslim Brotherhood endorsement). Flake.
Underneath that thin plastic exterior and the Trump hair, we have someone with a dark, stormy emotional life almost completely devoid of sympathy for others and easily rattled by those who challenge him. This is because for so many years, Romney has been living a lie and he's terrified of being found out - not just for the things that are public knowledge but for the things that are not so public - some things kept in his closet we like to call skeletons. The embarrassing aspect of this for Romney is that as an ISTJ, it is more than obvious. Romney is literally screaming out from the mountain top his vulnerabilities and the things he most greatly fears.
All of these amount to some valuable insights into Mitt Romney's moral compass and capacity as an unreliable leader. Mitt Romney was a failed, small-minded, liberal governor overseeing a failed liberal big-government state and prefers to "hunt small varmints" by uttering useless slogans to win office rather than truly leading. It's fairly clear the governor merely wishes to finish the work Barack Obama started - to manage the decline. We simply can't afford it.
Ultimately, the joke will be on Mitt Romney, whom the establishment sees as a throwaway candidate. In case you were wondering why the establishment would choose a flake like Mitt Romney rather than a quality candidate who nonetheless reflected their view of things such as a George H.W. Bush or someone similarly as serious, one need only consider what many establishment Republicans seem to believe, which is that Obama either can't be beaten or shouldn't.
Even Romney seems to agree. The long-talked about strategy is to field an unremarkable candidate who will not disrupt key congressional races and the effort to retake the Senate.
America wants to recover economically and morally, and that starts with not choosing a flaky, anti-science, serial liberal candidate of questionable moral character like Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney was right about one thing, however, when he stated, "There are many reasons not to vote for me." And we couldn't agree more.
Martin
is a master's student in national security studies and is the
executive director of Samizdat International, a genuine human rights
concern. He currently serves with the Newt Gingrich campaign as Texas
Chair for Students with Newt (posts at Blogbat are personal opinion and
do not necessarily reflect the views of the campaign). Martin undertook
his internship with the
London-based Henry
Jackson Society in the summer of 2009 and misses the irradiated sushi at
his favorite sushi haunt Itsu. He hates the Turabian style
format.
