Is Mitt Romney a Real American?
If it's our ideals and not our origins that make us countrymen, Romney's tactics suggest that he's the one whose Americanness should come under question.
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That's why Mitt Romney's birther-baiting remarks today are, in a way, welcome. Let there be no doubt: He is the candidate for people who think the name Obama must be Muslim and its bearer indelibly foreign. He is also the candidate for the greater number of people who do not initially imagine that someone with my face, my eyes, my skin could be from this country.
Even in one of his home states (Michigan, the site of today's remarks), Mitt Romney is not some iconic American hero whose patriotism is beyond reproach. The reason no one questions where Romney was born is simply this: he is white. If that's good enough for you, then you're good enough for Romney.
But that's not good enough for America. I have as much a claim to be the image of an American as Romney and his offspring do. So does Barack Obama. So, by the way, does Bobby Jindal or Ted Cruz or Susana Martinez -- nonwhites in Romney's own party who likely have also been asked (no, really) where they are from.
Romney's implicit pledge of allegiance to the birther movement is as revealing of his character as anything else in his campaign of half-deliberate opacity. He appears to lack a core capacity for empathy. He literally cannot see himself as someone not white, as someone accented or a newcomer.
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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/08/is-mitt-romney-a-real-american/261551/
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