At Stanford, Romney got his bearings in a year of change
Mitt Romney poses for his freshman class picture.
/ The Stanford Quad, 1966
Though 2,000 miles from his Michigan home, he wasn't far outside his comfort zone --not at first, at least.
An affable, good-looking and intellectually curious young man on a campus where many students matched that description, Romney began making friends on his very first day at Stanford.
Arriving on campus a day before the dorms opened to new students, Romney spent that first night at an administrator's house where he met a classmate, Paul Richardson, who would become a close companion.
"I remember late that night he talked about his opinion on the economy, and he could talk seriously about the Taft Hartley Act -- he was very aware of the features of it," Richardson recalled. "He had a very energizing personality. I admired him tremendously."
As a fun-loving kid who in high school had a penchant for crowd-pleasing gags, Romney would have taken note of the "Freshman's Pocket Guide to Stanford Life," which informed members of the incoming class that a "bitchin' R.F." was the colloquial term Stanford students used to describe a particularly well-played practical joke.
As the class of '69 poured into Palo Alto from around the country, there was excitement in the air over rumors that the university was on the verge of relaxing its stringent liquor policies. But as a non-drinker, Romney didn't much care about that, nor was he overly concerned about potential run-ins with "Captain Midnight" -- the pejorative term that students assigned to the campus police.
Aside from participating in the annual high jinks surrounding the big football game with cross-bay rival UC-Berkeley, Romney avoided any hints of trouble that fall.
Though his tight-knit Rinconada Hall dorm mates would later wax poetic in the class yearbook about their "magnificent bods," which were allegedly "in great demand throughout the year," Romney only had eyes for his sweetheart, Ann, about whom he spoke incessantly.
From the third-floor room that he shared with Mark Marquess, a scholarship athlete who has coached Stanford's top-flight baseball team for the last 36 years, Romney did not have a clear vantage point on the sharp needle of change that was about to suddenly pop his campus bubble.
Mitt Romney's formative year at Stanford
Change and Tradition
In the fall of 1965, the Bay Area was Ground Zero for a political and cultural upheaval that would soon explode nationwide and define the latter half of the decade for Romney's generation.
At a Palo Alto coffee house just down the street from Stanford, three young musicians had formed a jug band the previous year and were achieving some local popularity as a rock-and-roll outfit known as The Warlocks when Romney arrived in town. In December, the band members decided to change their name and gave their first performance in nearby San Jose as The Grateful Dead.
As Romney and his classmates attended school dances and pep rallies, Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters -- whose idea of a practical joke (dosing an unsuspecting recipient's drink with LSD) was rather different than Romney's -- were posting signs around Palo Alto to solicit new recruits for their "Acid Tests."
In late January, the resumption of U.S. airstrikes in North Vietnam brought with it a surge of student anti-war activity at Stanford, where a small core of radical students was starting to catch up with their Berkeley cousins in visibility and temerity, if not in numbers.
Over the course of the academic year, The Stanford Daily had documented with increasing regularity the anti-Vietnam demonstrations that were picking up steam in the region, particularly in Berkeley, where at one protest march, it was reported that "many of the girls wore jackets, pants, and black knee-length boots or black hose. Many boys were bearded."
Facial hair may have remained something of a novelty at Stanford, but sartorial norms were changing there, too.
Stanford ROTC students were being told by their superiors that they should change into civilian clothes immediately after completing their drills in order to avoid ridicule, and many of Romney's classmates were growing their hair in the bushy style of The Beatles, who visited San Francisco's Cow Palace in August.
Vietnam became the dominant political topic on campus, as students worried about whether the deferrals that their local draft boards had granted them would last as the demand for fresh inductees grew precipitously.
Meanwhile, Romney focused on integrating the traditions with which he was raised into his new life at Stanford.
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Coward.
Three stories lead to this question.
The least of these is the story that Romney strapped his dog to the roof of his car for a vacation trip. Certainly it shows a level of cruelty to an animal that most people find disturbing. Worse is the fact the dog was so terrified it **** itself and Romney just "hosed down" the dog and put it back in its torture chamber. Worst of all is the insane claim that the dog "loved it." Cruelty to animals, insensitive to suffering, insists the victim enjoyed the suffering - three major symptoms of a sociopath.
The second story comes from when he was in boarding school and criminally assaulted a fellow student. Organizing a gang to attack a younger student - clearly the act of a bully - shows the ability to manipulate others. He showed a desire to dominate and humiliate another. Ignoring the cries for help is cruelty to humans. There was a total lack of remorse to the point he claims to not even remember the event. So this incident has four major symptoms of a sociopath.
The third story is about how Romney liked to dress up like a policeman and pretend to be a cop. His "pranks" were to frighten and intimidate people. He would "arrest" women and abandon them without a car. His felonies include impersonating a law enforcement officer and kidnapping. Worst, however, is the creepiness factor. Serial killers and serial rapists like to impersonate policemen. That Romney chose this path for his recreation shows him to be a deeply disturbed individual.
We can add his joy at firing people, the pain he inflicted during his Bain Capital days, and his treatment of his neighbors as criminals to find an adult with a mile wide callousness streak. But does that make him a sociopath?
Of the traits of the sociopath listed here, Mitt Romney displays most of them. He is glib, manipulative, has a grandiose sense of self, and lacks remorse. He is emotionally shallow (robotic) and incapable of common empathy. He was a juvenile delinquent who got away with it because of his family connections. He is authoritarian, secretive, and paranoid. And he really does want to rule the world and will spend a billion dollars to do it.
The answer, I'm afraid, is yes. Mitt Romney is a sociopath and the dangers of electing one to the presidency cannot be overstated.
The fact is, Romney was solid in his youth, was solid throughout his business career, and is now presenting as a solid candidate for the Presidency. There is no way that he could do any worse job than the present occupant of the white house, and probably would do a lot better.
Obama got whisked into the White House as a novelty act, a feel good token that reaffirms to liberals how liberal and enlightened they are. Never mind the fact that Obama has been a mediocre president, largely taking his foreign policy cues from his anti-hero Bush, and largely stumbling in his domestic policies. Anything that goes wrong, he blames on someone else. He's an amateur. His VP is a bumbling bozo compared to the razor sharp Cheney, so he really has no one intelligent to guide him as W. did.
The Presidency is not a one man job; it takes a team. Obama is not a team player; he's all about Obama and unfortunately has bitten off way more than he can chew.
Romney will be a good and decent caretaker president to help us wend our way out of the deep pit of debt into which we have fallen, and to reorient the country toward economic growth as our primary goal, and away from social reengineering which has sapped our treasure and our competitiveness and our spirit. Now is the time when we should be focusing on competing with foreign rivals; we should be exploiting our shale oil and gas, we should be encouraging domestic manufacturing and not taxing or unionizing it out of the country. Romney is obviously better qualified for this job.
Romney is a good man, has had a "stellar" career, has proven himself in government, and will make a fine president.
I'm glad that we don't have to vote between the lesser of two evils this time like we did in 2008. We have likely the best presidential candidate of our lifetime running for president. Vote Mitt Romney for president in 2012!
If you want to learn more about him and where he stands on issues that are most important to you, check out mittromney.com campaign Website.
This must mean CBS will investigate Obama's formulative college years???
Hardly, CBS is home to emeritus Dan Rather, the Democrat hack journalist who lied and practiced fraudulent news.
1. I don't remember the Selective Service Test being voluntary. If you wanted to keep your college deferment, you took the test. I do remember guys crying in the test room before the test. I guess they weren't good at taking standardized tests. I also remember there was a tremendous uproar over the test. Ultimately, they stopped giving it and didn't use it to determine college deferment status.
2. Everyone I knew that dropped out of college in 1966 went to Vietnam. Several of them were killed. Obviously, when Romney dropped out of Standford, he had a plan B.
3. To be pro-Vietnam War and dodge the draft, i.e. missionary work in France, seems hypocritical to me. Conversely, I have all kinds of respect for those who opposed the war and went to Canada or jail, e.g. Muhammad Ali. Several of my friends returned to the U.S. for the first time in 20 years to attend our high school reunion in 1985. After the reunion dinner/dance, they went back to Canada.
4. A month after I finished college in April of 1969, I received my draft notice. However, since I was from a working class Michigan community, perhaps my draft board was more efficient than Romney's Bloomfield Hills draft board. In addition, as no one special and devoid of any political connections, I was expendable. Unlike Romney, I felt it was my duty to serve. Like Romney, I received a high draft number in Dec 1969. However, I was already in the Army and training for deployment to Vietnam.
But that doesn't mean they can't show up at a political rally.
And I believe what Moonves was stating was just a simple fact. Journalism has changed! See Rush, See Michael Moore. I don't think he was saying its right, just that it has in fact changed.
And ps, what is there is there legally (it's in his tax returns).