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Sure, Mittens can be annoying.
Paying an infuriatingly low tax rate and stashing millions in Swiss banks and the Cayman Islands, like a John Grisham villain. Letting son Tagg tweet a picture of him doing laundry on the road.
No matter what Romney is talking about in a debate, such as the inane suggestion that illegal aliens engage in “self-deportation,” he always looks like he’s really thinking: “Holy cow, it’s mine! GIVE IT TO ME!”
But the most annoying thing about him may be that he’s a prankster. If wit is the most sophisticated form of humor, pranks are the most juvenile.
George W. Bush was a big prankster, and you see where that got us. As head of the DKE fraternity in the ’60s—when many students were risking arrest for political protests—W. branded pledges with hot wire hangers and, after some holiday beers with pals, took a “decorating committee” on a mission to the New Haven shopping district.
But at least in college, W. had the excuse of being hammered. Mitt was a prankster in school and stone sober.
At the exclusive prep school Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Mitt was “slapstick to a fault,” as one of his friends put it to Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, the authors of “The Real Romney.” The candidate, who told Wolf Blitzer, “I live for laughter,” grew up loving the Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy and the Keystone Kops.
At Cranbrook, the authors report, “He staged an elaborate formal dinner in the median strip of a busy thoroughfare,” and another time “dressed up in a uniform similar to that worn by a police officer, put a flashing red ‘cherry top’ on his car, and raced after a vehicle carrying two of his male friends and their dates. By prearrangement, the friends had stashed beer bottles in the trunk and knew that Romney would pretend to be an officer chasing them. The dates had no idea of the plot.” The son of the Michigan governor “arrested” his friends, leaving the frightened girls behind for a spell.
Like W., another privileged political scion, Mitt supported the Vietnam war while avoiding it. At Stanford in ’65, freshman Mitt stayed in the bubble while others like David Harris, a resident adviser in Romney’s dorm, excoriated the escalation in Vietnam.
Mitt’s most serious commitment was to Ax-Com, or the Ax Committee. In the week before the football game between Stanford and University of California-Berkeley, Cal students would traditionally try to steal the ceremonial ax connected to the big bonfire.
Mitt spent four days and nights patrolling to protect the bonfire site and the ax. “When Mitt heard about a rally planned at Berkeley, he figured the ax heist might be discussed and decided to go undercover,” the authors write. “Ditching his coat and tie, he dressed up like an anti-war protester in the hope of going unnoticed in the Berkeley crowd. … One classmate recalled that Romney had borrowed David Harris’ clothing, although Harris has no recollection. … Harris was protesting a war and saw himself on a mission to prevent the United States from disaster, and Romney was protecting an ax in a campus tradition.”
JFK was a wit and a practical joker, according to Chris Matthews, the author of “Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero.” He said Kennedy once “scared the heck” out of his former Harvard roommate and fellow Massachusetts congressman Torby MacDonald by “having Ben Bradlee call him up and say he’s investigating a story about Torby and some questionable women.”
Even worse than being a prankster, which is mildly sadistic, is being pranked, which is wildly humiliating.
In a 2003 interview with Ali G, Newt Gingrich looked on bemusedly as Sacha Baron Cohen, in hip-hop disguise, mused about how a female president would spend all her time getting facials, buying shoes and falling for dictators, given how women like bad boys.
“Aren’t you worried,” Ali G pressed, “that the whole Cabinet would be like Brad Pitt on defense and George Clooney on health, you know, cause him from ‘E.R.’?”•
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Dowd is a New York Times columnist. Send comments on this column to ibjedit@ibj.com.
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