What Romney’s Dog Says About Romney

Walter Shapiro looks at the story of Mitt Romney’s dog Seamus “heroically riding for 12 hours in a dog carrier atop the family’s station wagon during a 1983 vacation to Canada” and says it has less to do with his treatment of animals than it does his treatment of people.

“What gives the Seamus story legs (four) is the inadvertent glimpse it offers of Romney’s rigidity. For all the natural parental annoyance with the constant are-we-there-yet demands and the bodily needs of five boys on the trek to Canada, it is a rare father who would so zealously limit bathroom and food stops. Remember: The Romneys were not exactly desperate refugees racing to get across the Canadian border before they were stopped by the authorities. They were an affluent American family on vacation, but with all the spontaneous joy of an automotive assembly line. Seamus was collateral damage. What matters is the suck-it-up discipline that Mitt Romney tried to impose on his family.”

“People are not cyborgs — they have human needs, including a propensity for rest stops and, in politics, healthy egos. But an awareness of these personal factors does not seem to be part of the Romney repertoire.”