Or take the controversy over Mitt’s refusal to release his tax returns, just supercharged by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s report that a Bain investor told him Romney paid no taxes for 10 years. GOP surrogates and commentators, who have never seen the returns, rushed to the barricades of the Sunday talk shows to label Reid “a liar.” They were uniformly indignant—and unconvincing. All they did was pour fuel on the fire. As veteran Republican strategist Ed Rollins said on Fox News, the questions are “gonna dog all the way,” and the only way to “to put it behind him” is to “release more taxes.”
I am now convinced Romney can’t. Either his closest confidants have convened around a table and concluded that there’s political disaster in those returns, or the candidate already knows this all too well and won’t show them to any of his handlers lest the information leak. Logic and my own experience in presidential politics persuade me that the only reason to withhold something like this is if its release could put a near end to the campaign.
For Romney and his operatives to find themselves in this situation is inexplicable, except on grounds of heedless greed. The man has known he was going to run for president for eight years or more, and perhaps for his whole adult life. So close the Swiss bank accounts and offshore investments in tax havens in, say, 2005 or 2006; he’d get away with disclosing just five years of returns. And he could have made sure he paid a reasonable percentage in income taxes each and every year. He didn’t have to jump through every loophole, moneybags in hand. To the horror of his accountants, he could have skipped some deductions. How about last year’s $77,000 deduction for that dancing horse?
In short, Romney needed to straighten out his financial affairs, and those around him should have told him to do it long ago. And if he is his own principal adviser on this, then he has an adviser who’s a fool—a very rich fool. His ignorance about the political fallout seems to be matched only by his arrogance in assuming that he can be simultaneously a plutocrat and presidential nominee.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/08/mitt-romney-lost-the-summer-tax-returns-overseas-gaffes-more.html
