If you wanted to devise a daily regimen for people that's aimed at pounding every last ounce of individuality out of them, you could study what they do in North Korea, or you could study what they do here:
The Romney Olympics have long included a mini-triathlon of biking, swimming and running that pits Mitt and his five sons and their wives against one another. But after Mitt once nearly finished last, behind a daughter-in-law who had given birth to her second child a couple of months earlier, the ultra-competitive and self-described unathletic patriarch expanded the games to give himself a better shot.Now they also compete to see who can hang onto a pole the longest, who can throw a football the farthest and who can hammer the most nails into a board in two minutes---not exactly the kind of events they’ll be giving out gold medals for in London this month.
By day, the Romneys kayak and water ski---one sport at which Mitt excels---play tennis and basketball, stage a “home-run derby” and horse around on a slip-and-slide. Most of the grandchildren (there are now 18) put on a talent show on a stage that Papa, as they call Mitt, constructed in the backyard. And he helps them roast s’mores over a campfire and leads them on treasure hunts. He grills chicken and salmon and teaches the kids how to drive his lawn tractor.
At night, the adults gather for family meetings, with each evening focused on a frank and full discussion of a different son’s career moves and parenting worries.
Each member of the family picks a daily chore from a “chore wheel,” so as to share cleaning tasks evenly. And before anyone departs, everyone poses on the lawn for a portrait for that year’s Romney family Christmas card. The grandchildren coordinate outfits; last summer, the girls wore matching orange and yellow polka-dotted dresses and the boys, blue checkered shirts [...]
Even as the close-knit clan embraces the childhood pastimes of a bygone era, summers here serve to enforce the bond of the primacy of this family. Trips to Wolfeboro are controlled and mandatory. There is no opting out.
One summer when Romney’s eldest son, Tagg, now 42, was working for the Los Angeles Dodgers, he told his father he wouldn’t make it to Wolfeboro. Baseball, after all, is a summer sport, and he didn’t think he could take a week off in the middle of the season.
“My dad said, ‘No, you will make it,’ ” Tagg recalled in an interview. So he showed up, noting, “I had to beg forgiveness from my bosses at the Dodgers” [...]
“You know,” Mitt added, “there’s more to that. I changed the nature of the triathlon after that. I didn’t like this idea that these were only swimming, biking and running.”
Now, he said, “we have log-sawing, nail-hammering. We added some things I excel at so I don’t come in last every year.”
Boy, you need an oxygen tank strapped to your back when this guy walks into the room.
Can't believe I'd ever say this, but I think I'd rather have someone like Palin running the country than this robotic control freak. She'd at least provide some measure of comic relief from time to time. To be fair, this curriculum of ritually enforced behavior most likely instills some semblance of self-discipline in his kids, which is not in itself a bad quality for children of wealth and privilege to internalize. But Jesus, what an ego-pulverizing experience it must be to live under the same roof with this guy.
This may also, perhaps, help to explain why Willard was apparently so fond of numbers and data during his time at Bain, and why he still relies on them now. You see, with numbers, there's no need for a great deal of creative (as opposed to analytical) thought---you run some cost-benefit analyses, construct some probability tables, and make your decisions based on what the numbers suggest. (This is not to denigrate truly creative people who made their livings working with numbers, but it's a long way from the theoretical writings of Richard Feynmann and Steven Hawking to drafting a P&L forecast for American Pad & Paper.)
But being a President, it seems to me, requires a certain fluidity and elasticity of thought; the ability to think on the fly under tremendous pressure from forces you often can't control; to process conflicting data without the aid of expert-drafted white papers or statistical charts (see: Johnson, Lyndon; Vietnam, War in); and to contextualize your decisions within the evolutionary flow of history as opposed to whatever short-term value accrues your chosen stakeholders.
I guess what I'm saying is, while Willard's certainly self-disciplined and possessed of a no-nonsense work ethic, his worldview sure seems to be defined by a pronounced intellectual rigidity. This trait has enabled him to seamlessly channel all the Teabilly talking points without breaking stride from his more "moderate" past, but it's probably what scares me most about having him as President. Like the gaggle of union-busting, business-tool nonentities who ran the White House in the latter half of the 19th century---Hayes, Harrison, McKinley---Willard would have been a perfect fit in our first Gilded Age, when patronage ruled and the executive chain of command ran strictly in one direction. I suppose whether he wins or loses in November will determine whether or not we're going to be saddled permanently with a second.
---Vitelius
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