The quiet authority of Romney rises today above the others and it is authentic, but it is new. It may be instructive that the first thing to rise from the benighted sea of unconsciousness that is the blogosphere when FIFA was seen to be rife with corruption was that that could be a job for Romney. It is what he does, no? Fix things that are broken. The question could not be far away: Then maybe he could fix us, no?
We have come to appreciate Romney and grant him this moral authority because of how we have come to know him. As we see him, it would not occur to him or his wife and family to advance with treachery, duplicity or deception. Because they are inherently honest. Because they are inscrutably moral and have a distinct, historical, American work ethic.
The Romneys are all the things today so many of us used to be so long ago and it all seems to come so naturally to them; as if they were a holdout from our past — or a vision of our future. And that is why we think of them in an emergency like FIFA; to fix the things that are broken — that we broke — in a world that is always breaking. Almost as a child would call on a parent.
It’s fine to revolt against Daddy until you wreck your car and lose your job. But Romney isn’t the Daddy of an America that chose Obama instead. It chose poorly.