I've included part of an article by David S. Bernstein at the end of this post. I've already posted this section on my facebook page, but I need to make a serious comment about it. In this article, Bernstein points ot that Mitt Romney did not exactly tell the truth during the second Presidential Debate. Romney did NOT take the initiative by telling his staff to compile a list of qualified women who could be part of his administrative staff.
That list had already been compiled by a non-partisan group that had already planned to provide the list to whoever would be elected Governor of Massachusetts. Romney DID indeed appoint a significant number of qualified women to his staff once he had such a list. And for that he should be applauded.
But my question--OUR question--needs to be: "Why did he feel compelled to exaggerate what he did," much in the same manner that we have to ask, "Why did Paul Ryan feel compelled to exaggerate the time in which he (Ryan) had run a marathon?"
Neither is a life-and-death issue. Yet. But if the Romney-Ryan ticket gets elected, at what point does the public need to ask, "Is their report of actions (allegedly) taken by Iran, or Russia, or North Korea, or... completely factual, and does their report indicate that Iran/Russia/North Korea is threatening our security?" Or, is their report an exaggeration of the truth? We had a similar problem with the Gulf of Tonkin nearly fifty years ago, and the exaggeration by the LBJ administration enabled us--caused us--to expand the Vietnam War into Cambodia. And, more recently, we had the same problem with the GWBush administration's claims of WMDs in Iraq.
We need to be able to trust our leaders on all matters, and especially on matters of national security. In so many things that the Romney-Ryan ticket has said, we haven't gotten the truth. We have gotten an exaggeration of the truth, so much so that some folk have labeled it lies.
I don't care about semantics right here. I do care that (a) both R&R have trouble remembering the truth, and so exaggerate to make themselves look better; or (b) they do remember the truth, but exaggerate anyway to make themselves look better; or (c) are congenitally incapable of telling the unadulterated truth. In any case, even in these small matters not of national security, I can't trust them. And I can't support such people to become our leaders when matters of national security may be at stake.
Here's the first part of David S. Bernstein's article, "Talking Politics,"on the "Disorientation 2012" blog about Romney's claim that he initiated the search for qualified women to be in his gubernatorial administration:
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Not a true story.
What actually happened was that in 2002 -- prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration -- a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.
They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.
I have written about this before, in various contexts; tonight I've checked with several people directly involved in the MassGAP effort who confirm that this history as I've just presented it is correct -- and that Romney's claim tonight, that he asked for such a study, is false.
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