Romney's Female Problem

Mitt Romney's now-infamous remark in Tuesday's debate on seeking "qualified women" for his administration as Governor of Massachusetts, yielding "binders full of women," should come as no surprise. He's a man so far removed from the real world that his personal sphere apparently didn't include women he deemed worthy of top jobs. He had to go out of his way to ask women's groups to elucidate where he might find topnotch female applicants for his camp. It's as if he were talking about some strange new species with which he had no acquaintance. It was a revelatory moment, illuminating just how alien a concept it was to him that such creatures were in abundant supply. He's stuck in the Fifties and early Sixties: Ward Cleaver meets Don Draper.

A vote for Romney is a giant step backward into that unenlightened era, when the best barometer of a woman's worth was how tasty her meatloaf was. His wife Ann only adds to the perception that her husband is out of touch with an entire gender, as she speaks on the stump about how great it is that women are talking about the economy. As if this was a new development. Women have long been the economic backbone of their own households, for starters. They've long been the overseers of finances, the most likely member of a family to keep and balance a checkbook, institute and follow a budget, and apportion the family income. Needless to say, women apply these same skills in the workplace.

The overriding impression I got from watching Mitt spar with Obama was how rude, uncooperative and selfish he was. He came across as spoiled and bullying, trying to run the whole show, attempting unsuccessfully to bulldoze Candy Crowley like he did Jim Lehrer. At one particularly revolting moment, he told the president to desist and wait his turn, like a schoolmarm correcting an errant child. I suppose he thinks he can treat other world leaders with the same dismissive, condescending attitude he exudes. It demonstrates another myth the GOP is trying to sell, that with a Republican at the helm and more money for the Defense Department, the rest of the planet will quake in the face of American might. Their candidate has zero foreign policy experience, a deficit that will no doubt be brought into sharp focus next week, when the last of the three debates covers that ground. Mitt is unaccustomed to being challenged, having to adapt and put the greater good ahead of his personal agenda. He's a CEO chauvinist who hogs the ball. That's not what the American people need in a president.