Current Events Watch

The year is 1996. Ridgefield, Connecticut. Fourteen-year-old raver girl bails, hits the Big Apple, hooks up with delinquent colleagues. Concert, party un, party deux, throw in some Ecstasy.

Later that same night across the river in New Jersey. Girl, buzzed on X, crashes at fellow raver boy’s house. Hangs out for a couple of days with his family, not yet ready to head home.

Meanwhile, back in Connecticut, Mom and Dad worry. They hear that she was last seen in New York City. Dad calls to inform friend and business partner, Mitt Romney. Parental hands wring.

Duty calls, and empathetic Mitt closes shop. Rallies subordinates for a search and rescue mission, books flights to NYC for all. Have You Seen Me? fliers in hand, they pound the pavement.

Cut to Jersey, where the crash pad family is watching TV. Seeing a report about their “missing” house guest, they call the cops, report that she is alive and well, homeward bound, and certainly not lost in New York. The search is called off.

Fast forward to 2007. New Hampshire. Well-intentioned Mitt, who eleven years earlier had put business on the back burner to spearhead the search for a runaway raver, is vying for the presidency.

Primaries pending and in need of support, he enlists the services of former business partner and party girl’s Dad to star in commercial touting why Romney should be the next ruler of the free world.

“My 14-year-old daughter had disappeared in New York City for three days. No one could find her. My business partner stepped forward to take charge. He closed the company and brought almost all our employees to New York.

“He said, ‘I don’t care how long it takes, we’re going to find her.’ He set up a command center and searched through the night. The man who helped save my daughter was Mitt Romney.

“Mitt’s done a lot of things that people say are nearly impossible. But for me, the most important thing he’s ever done is to help save my daughter.”

Without question, an admirable act. The Good Samaritan, exploiting company resources, human and otherwise, to organize a hunt for a partner and pal’s missing and wayward daughter. Kudos. Someone call Oprah.

But how exactly, pray tell, does Dad’s televised testimonial substantiate Mitt’s presidential aptitude? I don’t get it. Previous experience as a search party coordinator should be apropos of nothing, in my opinion, when applying for the position of Commander-in-Chief. Particularly when the experience is more than a decade past, not to mention unsuccessful.

The implications in the ad’s narrative are so tightly spun they might make Bill O’Reilly’s head explode. One can only hope.

First of all, viewers watching the ad are led to believe that Daddy’s little princess suddenly went missing, inexplicably wound up in Gotham, enter Romney to save the day. Lady in distress rescued!

Kind of glosses over that whole running away thing, the parties, the pills. And that, best of intentions aside, Romney’s First Division really played no role in “saving” the guy’s daughter. A girl who, in fact, didn’t need saving in the first place, hanging with her newfound homies in Jersey for awhile, and who voluntarily phoned home sans coercion.

Textbook example of post hoc, ergo propter hoc logic. “After this, therefore because of this.” Missing girl was found, Romney was in hot pursuit. Therefore, Mitt saved her.

Never mind that she wasn’t really lost or in need of salvation, or that the Romney crew was scouring the wrong streets in the wrong state and had zilch to do with her safe and sound return home. Apparently such trivial details are of little import.

With proper spinning and selective omissions, the resulting commercial is clearly intended to tug at the heartstrings of the most emotionally sensitive of New Hampshirian voters. Smokescreen marketing, fail-safe every time.

I still don’t understand, though, trifling facts aside and taken at copiously-edited face value, how this commercial evinces Romney’s presidential credentials. Of course, the ad ends with the obligatory, “I’m Mitt Romney, and I approved this message.” My question to Mitt would be, “Why?”

Never mind. Stupid question.

mitt romney, romney campaign, 2008 election, presidential election, romney commercial, new hampshire primaries