Canine Politics

Although first published several years ago, a particular story has dogged Mitt Romney’s campaign for months during the 2012 Republican primary.  The Dog Story.  A quick synopsis (confirmed by multiple members of the Romney family): while driving the family from Boston to Toronto in 1985, Mitt thought it a good idea to affix a dog kennel to the roof of the car, toss the dog, Seamus, inside, and take a road trip with the family.  During the trip, several of his sons noticed a brown liquid dripping down the side and proceeded to yell out, “gross,” as the dog had shat in his temporary living quarters, which was now streaming down the car (as any dog owner would know, dogs are quite susceptible to anxiety, they hate being left alone, often get nervous during lightning storms), so hurtling down the interstate at 65 miles per hours does wonders for their psyches and bowels.

When asked about this story some years later, Mitt’s first attempt at an explanation included, the kennel was air-tight so the dog was safe.  Well, if the box was air tight, the dog would have died and shit would not have been all over his car.  In his second attempt at an explanation, Mitt assured all of us that the dog loved it, it was no big deal, Seamus jumped right in.

At first glance, maybe this story can be dismissed as a mole hill, media hyperbole elevating a story to circulate through a couple of news cycles.   Just as the commercial media elevated no less than eight candidates as the next Republican nominee (remember Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain?) to fill their 24 hours of horse racing, Mitt’s dog story might be just that.  But those folks came and went (as well as an infinite number of forgotten election controversies), Seamus has not gone away.

And the reason this anecdote has not vanished is because in many significant ways it demonstrates the problem with the Romney campaign.  The guy is clueless, so detached from reality and so inept at human connection that he thought it was a good idea to drive a car down the road with a dog fastened to the roof.  At its simplest: this was a terrible idea, end of story.  As president, don’t we want a leader that makes good decisions?

Another example of the detriment to and symbolism of this story on the Romney campaign, the Republican echo chamber began a talking points campaign this week highlighting an excerpt from President Obama’s first book, Dreams of My Father, and his story of being a nine-year old in Indonesia that ate dog meat (as well as snake, grasshopper) served by his stepfather.  While hard to comprehend in our culture where dogs are members of our family, in the Indonesian culture as well as many others, eating dog is not uncommon.

Nevertheless, in an interview with the National Review, Mitt was asked this week the following question: In light of the President’s strange dietary selections in Indonesia, what is the strangest food you’ve ever eaten?  Mitt’s reply: I don’t recall eating anything particularly bizarre.  In addition to this gem, Sarah Palin made a joke about eating dog meat, Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom commented on a photo of the President with the White House dog as a “chilling photo,” and then comes the best of the best, Daily Caller genius Jim Treacher (the man taking credit for unearthing this bombshell from Obama’s New York Times best seller first published in 1995) who declared this week: Say what you want about Romney, but at least he only put a dog on the roof of his car, not the roof of his mouth. And whenever you bring up the one, we're going to bring up the other.

So first things first, Mitt’s reflection on his own dietary practices was one in a thousand ways the President has been categorized as the Other.  Mitt tells us that he has eaten escargot and oysters and mussels but these are not “exceptional features of American restaurants.”  The ethnocentrism at the root of his personal observation is another clear illustration of his disconnect and narrow view of the world.

Now let us get back to Treacher and his surrogacy here for Romney: the campaign wants the dog story to go away, and yet, here it is in back in our faces, front and center.  And more moronically, Treacher compares Mitt Romney’s decision-making and leadership to that of a nine-year-old boy.  So the standards his supporters are holding him to are the same as a child, a relatively poor child living with his family on the other side of the world.  Do not forget, it was Romney that bound Seamus and the kennel to the roof of a car, not a nine-year old boy.