Where's the outrage from Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and the rest of the right wing media cabal? Not only is Romney being trashed by the British press, but the Prime Minister himself ridiculed the great American state of Utah, calling it the middle of nowhere!  What arrogance. I've had enough of these insults. Romney took the trouble to grace the shores of England only to meet a disrespectful host. He should finish his fund raising, dump that small meaningless country, which, if it hadn't been isolated from Europe by a choppy channel, would have been overrun by Hitler in WWII. The fact is that Romney should just come back home.......oh.

Romney's faux pas in London illustrate the essential truth of the man and the campaign. Seldom has a Presidential candidate been as internally compromised as this Republican nominee is. The reason he says nothing of any substance about himself is because most of what a normal candidate would say about his experience leads down a booby trapped path. Romney is like the guy whose wife has just discovered his affair. There is nothing he can say which isn't worse than simply keeping his mouth shut and looking dumb. All Romney had to do was romance our ally for a couple of days and not bust the Queen's furniture. It should have been an easy assignment. But he blew it.   

Romney is a religious man but if he talks about religion it re-introduces the Mormon church to a host of wavering evangelicals who consider his religion a cult. He can't talk about his Massachusetts governorship because of that damned Romneycare thing. Increasingly he is minimizing his actual tenure at Bain even though the extent of his business career is his main calling card. The only safe path open to Romney was a foreign jaunt to try and create foreign policy bona fides where none existed. And he went bust! Is anyone surprised?

Reviewing Romney's answer to Brian Williams' question about the Olympics, it is easy to overlook Williams' actual question, "....how does it look to an experienced eye?" Hold on, dammit, who wrote that softball question?? A condition of the interview? Press acquiescence to the obvious framing of Romney's visit? I nearly bust an artery just thinking of that lame-stream pitch down the middle. 

Blatantly aiming his answer at an American audience, Romney took a shot at appearing executive-like, of weighing the issues and being analytical---the way a business magnate would act on a huge deal in a board room. But Romney could not answer a simple softball question without creating a controversy. Here's a suggestion: to Romney's political staff: have Romney develop laryngitis for the balance of the campaign.

A guest on Morning Joe busted into the conversation with the conclusion that Romney's comments were a moment of lucidity. In other words, because it is so rare for Romney and Obama to actually penetrate the veil of disingenuousness with an honest opinion, the press was caught off guard, couldn't handle it and made a fuss over nothing. Presumably we need more lucidity so that everyone can get used to it. 

But lucidity is not the point. 

The obvious interview setup was for Romney to use his Salt Lake Olympic experience to show off his analytical prowess to an American audience. But Romney was unable to simultaneously hold in his mind the other thought of possible insults to his host country. What the former CEO of Bain Capital showed to the American electorate is that in a good business deal the broader implications are not relevant. He gave us a tutorial in the difference between conducting business and conducting diplomacy.

While in London Romney attempted to make a political football out of Winston Churchill's bust---a gambit which was perhaps the pinnacle of his failure to impersonate statesmanship. What a cheap ploy. It was banal opportunism without a broader context---for example, the bust as art.

I take it back. For Romney, "bust" is an art.

Whatever happens during the balance of his grand tour I suggest that Romney has sculpted his own bust and that it should be returned and buried out in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps when the bust  is re-discovered in a century or so the happy archeologist will have been the only person on any planet who was actually surprised by the man---a one-dimensional business suit---known in his day as---Mitt Romney.