Oh, that Mittens — he sure can be a zany guy (Dowd column on Mitt the childish prankster)

http://thechronicleherald.ca/thenovascotian/56853-oh-mittens-he-sure-can-be-zany-guy

But the most annoying thing about him may be that he’s a prankster. If wit is the most sophisticated form of humor, pranks are the most juvenile.

-snip-

Mitt’s most serious commitment was to Ax-Com, or the Ax Committee. In the week before the football game between Stanford and University of California-Berkeley, Cal students would traditionally try to steal the ceremonial ax connected to the big bonfire.

Mitt spent four days and nights patrolling to protect the bonfire site and the ax. "When Mitt heard about a rally planned at Berkeley, he figured the ax heist might be discussed and decided to go undercover," the authors write. "Ditching his coat and tie, he dressed up like an anti-war protester in the hope of going unnoticed in the Berkeley crowd. . . . One classmate recalled that Romney had borrowed David Harris’ clothing, although Harris has no recollection. . . . Harris was protesting a war and saw himself on a mission to prevent the United States from disaster, and Romney was protecting an ax in a campus tradition."

The authors chronicled Romney’s "zany" side. "As a missionary, he had sometimes assumed the voices of cartoon characters in letters home," they wrote. Later, as a Mormon bishop, he once jumped up during a meeting with a Mormon counselor and started singing Billie Jean and moonwalking. A former campaign adviser told me Mitt once flummoxed staffers, creating the illusion that he was on an endless bathroom stop by pouring water into the toilet.

-snip-

Emphasis added.

Romney, like W, has simply never grown up. He can sometimes pretend to be an adult, but essentially he, like W, is an aging preppy prankster -- "and you see where that got us."

And this basic childishness is an aspect of Romney that Democrats need to hit hard, especially in contrast to President Obama, the adult in the room.