Mitt on Netflix: A knight errant in an age of political cynicism

A new documentary offers a behind-the-scenes look at Mitt Romney's ill-fated presidential campaigns

Mitt and Ann Romney
(Image credit: (Al Bello/Getty Images))

When we think of that rarest figure in American politics — a man of integrity — Mitt Romney does not usually leap to mind. The biggest knock against the two-time presidential candidate is that he is a flip-flopper, his convictions as flimsy as the thousands of lawn signs that bore his name in 2008 and 2012. It's a reputation that earned him the eternal distrust of a Republican base in search of a genuine conservative, as well as Democrats unpersuaded by this "severely conservative" former governor's attempts to tack to the center.

Indeed, Mitt Romney seemed to transcend mere two-facedness — on issues ranging from abortion to health care — to achieve new heights of cynicism. There were his grinning reassurances that his budget math made sense when it clearly didn't; the mindless cant about American greatness that had supposedly been undermined by President Obama's non-existent "apology tour"; the celerity with which his campaign politicized the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, plunging the incident into a funhouse of partisan mirrors from which the truth has yet to emerge; and his belief to the very end that he would be the 45th president of the United States, displaying disdain for an objective reality that was apparent to everyone outside Fox News.

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Ryu Spaeth

Ryu Spaeth is deputy editor at TheWeek.com. Follow him on Twitter.