Hiding in Plain Sight

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/opinion/dowd-hiding-in-plain-sight.html?_r=1

Hiding in Plain Sight
By MAUREEN DOWD

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Romney is so secretive that he’s beginning to make the über-clandestine Cheney look like The Bachelorette.

The Boston Globe reported Tuesday that although Romney promised “complete transparency” when he stepped in to save the Salt Lake City Olympics, he became a black hole: “Some who worked with Romney describe a close-to-the-vest chief executive unwilling to share so much as a budget with a state board responsible for spending oversight. Archivists now say most key records about the Games’ internal workings were destroyed under the supervision of a staffer shortly after the flame was extinguished at Olympic Cauldron Park, after Romney had returned to Massachusetts.” (Wouldn’t it have been simpler to just burn the records in the flame?)

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As Maggie Haberman observed in Politico, Romney has made a calculated decision to hide three major elements of his background: his Mormonism, his record at Bain and his time as governor. This creates, she wrote, “a kind of self-imposed paralysis on biographical messaging that some observers, including Republicans, say may wound his campaign in an era in which voters want to achieve a kind of unprecedented intimacy with their candidates.”

Former rival Newt Gingrich told Politico Tuesday that Romney needs to relax and let people see who he is, noting that, except for family, “there’s a place where Mitt clearly doesn’t let people get.”

So far, Mitt’s casting a shadowy silhouette, hiding his fortune in foreign tax havens, hiding tax returns, destroying and hiding records as head of the Olympics and as governor, hiding a specific sense of where he would take the country.

Americans don’t want to play hide-and-seek with their presidential candidates. Romney should listen to himself: The time for stonewalling is over.