The Race: More Romney meltdowns (Part 2)

This is the second in a two-part series on Gov. Mitt Romney’ meltdown. Read the first part  here.

Meltdowns happen far more often in presidential campaigns than most people realize: Visualize the main candidates as giant World War II battleships or aircraft carriers: They can be blasted into blazing hulks by a rapid, accurate barrage of shells; they can take three or four torpedoes below the waterline and slowly sink between the waves.

Or, like the famous German battleship Bismarck in 1941, their rudder can be jammed by enemy action leaving them to turn helplessly in circles as sitting ducks. That’s what Mitt Romney is doing now.

When U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens was horrifically murdered in Benghazi last week, Romney did his best – or worst – impression of Joe McCarthy or Richard Nixon. In a time of national crisis or catastrophe, Rule Number One is for the leaders of the opposition party to rally round the flag and soberly, loyally support the president. That is what Al Gore did after 9/11.

Instead, Romney tried to blame the Obama administration and the president in person for being feckless and ignoring warnings that could have saved the ambassador’s life. Considering how George W. Bush was caught flatfooted on 9/11, that is a dangerous, as well as a cheap and demagogic game, for any Republican to play.

Romney didn’t score any points off the president and he got no boost in the polls for his efforts either. He came across as panicky, underhanded and cheap. I always thought him a better man than to stoop so low, so quickly and desperately.

The economy and foreign affairs – the traditional areas of boasted Republican success and expertise for 60 years back to Dwight D. Eisenhower – at least until George W. Bush bungled them both.

The economy should have been a slam dunk for Romney with as many Americans out of work or under-employed as there were in 1935 during the Great Depression. Yet he managed to blow even that with is profligate, reckless pledges of ever more tax cuts.

And as for the boundless enthusiasm of the troops – something George W. Bush and Dick Cheney took full advantage of in 2000 and 2004, Romney couldn’t even remember to include a single reference to them or to the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in his convention acceptance speech.

The signs of a meltdown in the Romney campaign are coming across now loud and clear. Hapless Stuart Stevens is clearly being set up to take the fall for the chaotic and ludicrous miscalls that have turned the best-funded campaign in U.S. history into a floating wreck. But the ultimate responsibility of course is Romney’s – the hands-on (we were told) CEO who hired Stevens and stood by him.

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign melted down against then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008 and Sen. John McCain’s never recovered from the obvious fact that he didn’t have a clue what to do, or even say, when the Wall Street financial meltdown began in September 2008. Letting his running mate Sarah Palin open her mouth to Katie Couric completed the fiasco.

Sen. John Kerry, who spoke so well at Charlotte this year, never recovered from his deer-caught-in-the-headlights response to the shameless swift-boating of his genuinely admirable Vietnam combat record when he was the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2004 campaign. Kerry’s old boss, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, made an eternal laughing stock of himself by continually refusing to show any emotion during the 1988 campaign when asked what his response would be if his wife was raped and murdered.

Romney is showing all the emotional fire of Dukakis in 1988, all the confident decisiveness of Kerry in 2004 and all the commanding intellect of McCain and Palin in 2008.

Now we have a new video in which Romney, the wealthiest individual ever to run as a Republican presidential nominee, is recorded sneeringly dismissing everyone who will vote for President Obama as government –dependent parasites. In the same video he made tasteless comments about Latinos as well.

I see only one hope for the GOP in this campaign. They must force their Keystone Kop of a Kandidate to stand down at once and replace him with a Marco Rubio-Sandra Martinez ticket pledged to fiscal competence, honesty and accepting the proposals of the Bowles-Simpson Commission to prevent the fiscal collapse of the United States.

Romney should accept the recommendations of Bowles-Simpson. At one stroke that would restore his lost reputation for integrity, business acumen, fiscal responsibility and even courage. But of course he won’t. Such a simple, straightforward and patriotic action that would be so good for the entire country is obviously beyond him. And even if he did, his extraordinarily hapless track record leaves no confidence that he would be capable of keeping such pledges, even if he thought he wanted to.

It was clear by August 2004 that John Kerry had melted down. Incumbent President Bush 43 was able to complete his campaign in a walk. After McCain and Palin had displayed their guileless ignorance in the face of the September 2008 financial tsunami, then-Sen. Obama could have taken the rest of his campaign off to play basketball or golf.

Obama isn’t quite there yet. I really don’t think Romney will land a glove on him during the presidential debates. But given the parlous state of the world and of the U.S. economy, October Surprises are all too possible. Still, the president’s lead is widening, Romney is getting desperate and his increasing wild shots are backfiring on him.

To paraphrase Damon Runyon, it’s clear which way to bet.