Josh Romney Implies President Obama is an “Obstinate Child”

COMMENTARY | Among the things Mitt Romney taught his boys — along with digging holes for apparently no reason and filling them in again — honesty and respect might have been good qualities to impart.

According to Josh Romney, speaking of his dad’s debate performance, “I take a lot of pride in that, because — I don’t know if you noticed, but I was — me and my brothers were responsible for my dad doing so well. We were the ones, as kids, that kept saying the same thing over and over. And we’d say the same lie over and over.”

Great sense of morality you’ve instilled there, Mitt, but I promised a lack of respect as well as a lack of honesty. Here’s the kicker.

Said 37-year-old Josh regarding his dad’s tangle with President Barack Obama, “So as a father, he learned how to debate an obstinate child,” reports Talking Points Memo.

An obstinate child. Let me repeat it, if the audacity of Josh’s use of that phrase to describe the president of the United States, a man 14 years his senior, escapes you.

An obstinate child.

Child, incidentally, is a word that is “boy” adjacent. As the president is clearly older than Josh Romney, there is one way, and one way only, in which he could possibly refer to Obama as a child or “childlike.”

And that is utterly unacceptable. I will use plain words because there must be no ambiguity, no room for misunderstanding. This statement was pure, unfettered, out-in-the-light-of-day racism.

Josh equated not even his current, not-terribly distinguished or accomplished self — it appears, according to Buzzfeed, that he works for some kind of family business called “Romney Ventures” — to the first African-American president. Not the now, successful-by-association Josh.

Josh as a “kid.” Who apparently lied and lied and lied.

He compared that kid to a man of color who rose through obscurity from unknown in 2004 to president in 2008. He compared that kid to a man who is extraordinary, no matter how you try to obfuscate that fact, simply because of what he’s accomplished. And he compared himself not even as an adult, but as a lying child.

Lying might be a fact of being a Romney, given that Mitt is up to 767 lies on the campaign trail since late 2011, and Josh himself talks about how he and his brothers tried to lie their way past their dad. It sounds like lies are the Romney Way, if Josh “takes pride” in it.

But if honesty was beyond his grasp to teach, as he has such a loose hold on those principles himself, the least Mitt could have done was to teach his sons to view and treat others with respect.

Given Mitt’s 47 percent remarks and other comments at the secretly recorded fundraiser, perhaps that is too much to ask as well.

There have been so many things this election season I’ve said that I thought were unnecessary in a civilized society. But our society is pretty uncivilized if referring to the sitting president as an “obstinate child” is considered a good opener for his political opponent.

In essence, a father, himself, is a leader. He teaches his children right from wrong, he teaches them morals, he gives them boundaries. He shows through example, and when he’s wrong, he teaches through that as well.

Mitt Romney has failed even as a leader to his children. If a son like Josh, living off his family’s name, spewing overt racism, and bragging about the repeated lies he and his brothers told as children is the living example of his leadership, then to the concept of Mitt as our nation’s leader, I offer a hearty “No thanks.”