08.06.07
Gail Collins in the NY Times
Gail Collins of the New York Times has moved from editor of the editorial page on the left to the opinion page on the right, which is most welcome and has nothing at all to do with her political leanings. She’s just a really good writer and thinker.
See in particular her recent column on Mitt Romney who used to strap his dog in his crate on top of the family car when driving for summer vacations from Boston to Ontario, a distance of perhaps as much a 1,000 miles or more going who-knows-how-fast through an area of the country that can have some pretty nasty weather even in the summer.
Seamus, in case you missed the story, was the Romneys’ Irish setter back in the early 1980s. Mitt used to drive the family from Boston to Ontario every summer for a vacation, with the dog strapped to the roof in a crate.
As The Boston Globe reported this summer, Romney had the entire trip planned so rigidly that every gas station stop was predetermined before departure. During the fatal trip of ’83, Seamus apparently needed one more than the schedule allowed. When evidence of the setter’s incontinence came running down the back windshield, Romney abandoned his itinerary and drove to the closest gas station, where he got a hose and sprayed both dog and station wagon clean.
“It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management,” The Globe said.
The question raised is what ugly snippets like this reveal about character. From Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, we could probably conclude that these little embarrassing moments — not little from Seamus the dog’s POV, certainly — are the most telling of all.