Meet Mitt

Mitt Romney’s 1983 family vacation seems to be some sort of metaphor. A 12-hour drive illustrating the motto of all driven (get it? driven? get it?) presidential candidates that it’s the destination not the journey that’s important, he told his five children, the oldest of whom was 13 or so, there would be no stops except for gas, so they’d better coordinate their bodily functions with the station wagon’s mechanical ones. Oh, and the dog was in a carrier strapped to the roof the whole way. And you just know the Mittster insisted on doing all the driving himself.

A shiny quarter for the first person to spot a cartoon depicting an Irish setter in a carrier strapped to the roof of Air Force One.

You can pick through the Boston Globe series for other telling details, like his wedding being officiated by the Mormon church elder “after whom teenage Mitt had patterned his hairstyle.”

The writers, as others have been pointing out, bestow odd praise on Romney, for instance for his “emotion-free crisis management” in quick-thinkingly borrowing a hose after the dog shit down the rear windshield, and for “eschew[ing] the trappings of wealth” by not hiring a cook or a full-time maid after he became a millionaire, which sharp-eyed readers will have already noted affected his wife’s way of life rather more than his own.

However, we are also told that he thinks his wife is way better than him (in that creepy George Bush “I married above myself,” “my wife has so much patience” sort of way), and permitted her to take bathroom breaks during family drives even when no bathroom breaks were scheduled!

In comments, if you are so minded, decode the metaphor that is The Romneys Are Going To Canada. What does Seamus the dog represent? Or the five children, trying desperately to restrain their bladders? Or the shit dripping down the rear window?

Also, is anyone else reminded of Terry O’Quinn in The Stepfather?

And should Romney just go ahead and alienate cat- as well as dog-lovers by naming Bill Frist as his running mate?