The first questions begged by this book's title is who is apologizing and who is making the argument that America should
not be great. It's a bit like titling a book, The Case for My Daughter's Being Valedictorian. What father would not like his daughter to excel and who would make a cogent argument against such excellence? But greatness of any sort must be earned, not argued for. I love America, but imagine the Australians, Japanese, and Swiss love their countries also. What Romney argues in this book is not that America should be great but that it should use its military and economic might to win greatness whether it has earned it or not.
He begins with a quotation from an unlikely source, Dwight Eisenhower, the man who warned us of the dangers of a perpetual war footing that Candidate Romney seems to think is just swell, even coining the phrase "military industrial congressional complex" (he left the congressional part out at the last minute considering it was Congress after all he was going to be giving his warning-laced farewell address to). "We must be ready to dare all for our country," Ike intones from the frontispiece of Romney's book. Wow. Coming from a man who did not even serve in our country's military and who has consistently argued that having to pay 13% or so to his country in taxes is unfair, I can hardly wait for how Romney reconciles the bold words of the Supreme Allied Commander with the comfortable, fabulously wealthy lifestyle of Willard Romney.
We must secure our "freedom, peace, and prosperity" he tells us. How? "By strengthening America." A sentence later he circles back, saying with no more clarity that a strong America will enjoy prosperity following a period of hardship. He implies we are in a period of hardship as great as the Civil War, World War I or II, and that - perhaps with the help of his book - we can rise up and do it! What remains unclear, but he spews out these general tautologies with the breathlessness of someone saying Something Really Important.
His idea of hardship sounds almost insulting to Americans struggling to feed children or find healthcare: pulling weeds on his admittedly "prosperous" estate as a child.
He borrows from his father's story and grandfather's story, morphing it into his own. My grandfather left behind his possessions once in Mexico so somehow that should make Mitt understand the middle class today. My dad made the cover of Time Magazine, turning GM around, so gosh golly that shows that if you trust me, I'll turn America around too. From what exactly?
Romney launches into a rambling survey of American history. Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush won the cold war, he tells us, ignoring the role played by millions of nonviolent demonstraters who courageously rose up in Eastern Europe and later the Soviet Union without any assistance from us (giving a single rousing speech doesn't count). He also ignores the role played by the mujahadin, including one Osama bin Laden, in bleeding the Russians dry in Afghanistan and showing the futility of even the mightiest of superpowers against determined Islamic fighters not afraid to die.
Like many people ungraced by military experience, Romney seems to believe military might (or "greatness") is a matter of counting things that go boom. He is particularly keen on counting boats. George Washington had few ships; the British had many. We now have "over one hundred ships" fewer in our navy. Ipso facto, we must be less great.
A single astonishing paragraph illustrates everything that is wrong with this book and by extension the man trying to sell himself through it. On page 9, he summarizes the greatest economic expansion in human history that took place under President Clinton (although you would never know it since Romney does not name him) as "in some ways, we advanced as a nation during these years." But did we really, he asks? We decreased our military by 400,000 troops, got rid of those ships and "more ominously, we gutted our human intelligence capabilities." As a former military intelligence officer, this is news to me, unless he is referring to the dozens of Arab linguists fired because they were gay, a policy Romney supported until recently. Somehow - in the same paragraph! - he goes from this sweeping indictment of our military and intelligence services to a tongue-clucking musing about teen pregnancy, drug use, and pornography. In the mind of Romney, these are somehow related, as though a sweaty encounter in the backseat of a car is made more likely because we have fewer ships in our fleet.
He dismisses the massive Wall Street-inspired meltdown of 2008 as a "panic" and the modestly increased financial regulation still bogged down in committee or stripped of any real teeth as "intemperate actions." But maddeningly, as is true throughout the book and the campaign, Romney offers no specifics. This is barbershop politics, the finger-wagging lament of a wealthy white man who believes he is among friends and can let loose with a tirade of stereotypes - untethered to any real facts - about how the country is going to hell now that a black man runs it.
So what would have Romney have done in 2008 that was not "intemperate" and what evidence does he have that it would have been as successful at stopping the financial implosion then reversing it? He doesn't say. He just says it would work, trust him on this one, just like Pop's plan worked at General Motors.
What exactly is he saying in a sentence like this: "It is time for America to pursue the difficult course ahead, to confront the looming problems, to strengthen the foundations of our prosperity, and to secure the sources of our liberty and safety"? Good thing Mitt thought of it (whatever it is) and isn't it just awful that the Obama administration (by implication) is doing none of these things, or not doing them effectively? If you're not asleep by the end of this sentence, you're disappointed to have stayed awake for this pulp.
America is sick, he seems to be saying, so sick that it requires a radical treatment, although he is as vague about this treatment or its probability of success as he is about the diagnosis or why we should abandon the current treatment plan which - although far from perfect - is at least moving in the right direction.
Those on the far right (although Romney was once moderate, he is now courting the far right who dominate the Republican party, so must talk and write like one) have an unenviable problem: they must make the case that the country is in terrible shape while not appearing to be defeatist or even anti-American. They must criticize the federal government while making clear that somehow that does not mean that they hate the country of America which by their definition ignores the one out of five Americans working for or supported by the federal government, including the military they profess to love. They must play up the fact we have not recovered completely from the horrific mess President Obama inherited without reminding voters who created that mess. They must never mention Bush and hope everyone just forgets that Romney's antidote to what ails us - deregulation and lower taxes - is what got us in this mess in the first place. Romney also has a far larger philosophical problem that he does not even begin to tackle in this book: why we should trust a party that alleges government can do nothing right to run said government.
