Romney fails the character test on his taxes, and everything else

Reader BlueOysterJoe weighs in:

From Harry Reid's statement:

“When will the American people see the returns he filed before he was running for president?,” Mr. Reid said. “Governor Romney is showing us what he does when the public is looking. The true test of his character would be to show what he did when everyone was not looking at his taxes.”

I like how Reid refers to this as a question of character.

"Character" is often a term used by politicians to demagogue or dog whistle, but to some degree, character is important for anyone in public office. If a politician is a drunk or an adulterer or whatever, and it doesn't affect his job, I am not going to necessarily like them, but I will likely give them a pass. We're all human, and I suspect if each of us knew everything that everyone else did in their moments of weakness, it would be an eye opening experience indeed ...

But there does reach a point where mistakes, personal flaws, etc. force you to question the very core of a person's being. If someone had an affair ... that's not great, but ok. If the same person had an affair while his wife was dying from cancer, that suggests a kind of core evil / darkness lurking in that person's soul that I think makes him unfit for office.

Returning to Romney, it's not just that he tells a certain quantity of lies or that he made his money as a corporate raider. It's the fact that his core character seems polluted by a kind of depravity that would make him a terrible president. This core depravity is what links his homophobic pranks, his treatment of family pets, his methods for making money, his serial lying and these income tax shenanigans. It's a character issue, and the Dems should be talking more about it.