I don’t want to belabor the point, but to follow up on an earlier item, Mitt Romney seems to be a little stuck on a controversy of his own making.
To briefly recap, Romney has defended his position on civil rights, in multiple high-profile settings, by insisting that his father marched with Martin Luther King during his tenure as governor of Michigan in the 1960s. Pressed for specifics, the Romney campaign pointed to an event that occurred in Grosse Point, Mich.
The claim appears to be false — Romney’s father did not march with King. Unfortunately, the campaign has come up with an unpersuasive defense.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has said he watched his father, the late Michigan Gov. George Romney, in a 1960s civil rights march in Michigan with Martin Luther King Jr.
On Wednesday, Romney’s campaign said his recollections of watching his father, an ardent civil rights supporter, march with King were meant to be figurative.
“He was speaking figuratively, not literally,” Eric Fehrnstrom, spokesman for the Romney campaign, said of the candidate.
C’mon, Romney campaign, you can do better than this. Romney told two national television audiences, “I saw my father march with Martin Luther King.” That was a “figurative” claim?
I wonder what might have happened to Al Gore seven years ago if, confronted with the manufactured controversy about “inventing the Internet,” he said, “I meant that figuratively.”
I appreciate the risks of making too much of this incident, but Romney has used his father’s MLK march as proof of his civil right bona fides. He made this a key part of his background, on an issue of major national importance. And it’s just not true.
What’s more, Romney didn’t need to go there. His parents really were advocates of civil rights, but like Rudy Giuliani, Romney decided it wasn’t enough to point to the record; he had to exaggerate it to make it appear more impressive.
Fundamentally, the whole incident is just so foolish. Romney made up a claim he didn’t need to lie about, and just as importantly, he used his father’s civil-rights record as a substitute for his own — as if George Romney’s support for the MLK agenda can be inherited.
And then, just to make the whole mess look truly ridiculous, his campaign comes up with, “He was speaking figuratively, not literally.” Dumb, dumb, dumb.
As my friend Anne put it:
People who can’t figure out that pretty much every claim they make will be fact-checked, and who don’t realize that things they say in front of microphones and cameras, and things they write for newspapers and magazines, are recorded for all time, should not be considered smart enough to hold the reins of power.
I suspect that’s exactly what happened: Romney assumed no one would check. He was wrong.