It is not Mitt Romney’s fault that the apparent length of the Decent Interval between a massacre of innocent teenagers — in this case by a neo-Nazi whose cause and means have received aid and comfort from the United States government — and a return to politics as usual is less than 48 hours.
Mitt doesn’t make the rules.
He is just running for the United States Senate. A place brimming with thoughts and prayers but no obvious desire to do anything to make the nation it supposedly represents a civilized society. A civilized society being a place where the desire to have military-grade weaponry — unless you are in the military — is properly understood to be weird. And where the provision of health care for the victims of said weapons — and everyone else — is rightly seen as just normal.
Romney’s announcement had been set for Thursday. But late Wednesday, while the whole of the American media was focused on the latest example of what happens when too many of us read the Second Amendment the way child pornographers read the First Amendment, he wisely announced that he would hold off a bit.
His statement that the delay was out of respect for the victims and families in Florida was totally reasonable. It also recognized the fact that nobody would be listening to him if he had stuck to his original schedule or, worse, if they did listen, they might be pressing him to suggest some steps to reduce gun violence in America.
Romney is running as a Republican, much to the chagrin of some who had hopes he might go independent or throw in with the new United Utah Party. And that meant that rolling out with anything short of a declaration of eternal fealty to the National Rifle Association might have ended his campaign before it started.
Between the time this is written (Friday afternoon) and the time some of you read it (Sunday morning), Romney may have said some things about guns that are braver than any of us have a right to expect.
He has, after all, already violated one Republican commandment by acknowledging that there is such a thing as climate change, and bent another one by opposing any mass deportation of Dreamers or any other class of immigrants.
In the latter case, Romney does, as he claims, carry Utah’s message to the rest of the nation. The history of this state was largely written by people fleeing oppression in another land, and any politician who thinks he or she can make hay by promising to bar or get rid of “those people” is not going to get as far here as in many other states.
If Romney can make that feeling respectable among Republicans in Washington, he will have indeed accomplished something.
What we are all waiting for, of course, is to see how he hitches his electoral wagon to — or turns his back on — the current president of the United States.
Some of us have been saying for some time now that Romney, even as the most junior of senators, would be preferable to the seniority-rich incumbent, Orrin Hatch. One big reason for that is that Romney has been known to disagree, sometimes in language much stronger than politicians usually use, with the president, his actions, his character and, most important these days, his tweets.
Romney may not become the highest-level and most visible critic of the president. But even if he plays it Utah nice, it would be so much less embarrassing than the sight of Hatch squealing over the president the way a 14-year-old girl would swoon at the sight of Justin Timberlake.
Some Utah Republicans have been heard to complain that Mitt is a carpetbagger from Massachusetts (or is it Michigan?) who is messing up the natural order of succession by barging in and claiming a seat that lifelong Utahns should have a chance at. Maybe.
What was striking was the quote from Gov. Gary Herbert, the symbolic leader of all Utah Republicans, who noted that U.S. senators are supposed to have the good of the whole nation, not just a single state, in mind. Following that good advice, of course, might lead Romney to, just as an example, be much more supportive of the nation holding onto its ownership of millions of acres of public lands in Utah and throughout the West.
And holding that national, rather than a provincial, mindset might set Romney up for the goal he may really have in mind. The prize that would be worth a couple of years of a junior senator, languishing on the benches of what might be, after November, a Democratic-controlled Congress.
A run for president in 2020. To succeed the incumbent if possible, to oust him if necessary.
If that happens, the lifelong Utahns who thought that Senate seat was properly theirs will have another run at it. And the rest of us can breathe the fresh air of being governed by a normal American politician.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Tribune staff. George Pyle.
George Pyle, The Tribune’s editorial page editor, invites you to listen to the Agree to Disagree podcast, recorded (almost) weekly with editorial writer Michelle Quist. sltrib.com/podcasts/