That's What She Said, Mr. Romney.

It has taken me a while, but I've finally figured something out that has been bothering me for a while. I knew that Mitt Romney reminded me of someone, someone I knew I disliked, but could not think of who that someone was. Now I remember, and it makes enough sense that it is rather scary.

Mitt Romney, you remind me of Michael Scott, the pandering and hyper-socially-sensitive boss of the fictional paper company Dunder-Mifflin.

The overarching theme of Michael Scott's life (besides finding a woman who can stand him long enough to marry him) is the pursuit of the good opinion of others. He is obsessed with being liked for who he thinks he is (and is usually not in reality.) The situation calls for a cool and hip game of basketball with the mostly-black warehouse crew? He'll don a backwards baseball cap and blame his inability to shoot a basket on the net. He has to motivate his team to make a big sale? He'll make a video of himself talking gibberish about sales and motivation and awesomeness with himself as the star.

The result is Ricky Gervais-typical humorous awkwardness, an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of the audience's collective stomach that they will simultaneously never know this man at all and also that his soul is laid bare for all to inspect. Michael Scott is simple in the midst of the complexity he surrounds himself with. He wants to be friends with everyone, to be everyone's buddy, to be loved and revered by all. His actions achieve the exact opposite on most occasions; he is not respected or revered precisely because in the end he is nothing by trying to be everything.

Although every politician does this to some degree in order to increase their appeal, I have detected this same quality to an even more disturbing degree in the current front-runner of the GOP. Mitt Romney so desperately wants to be liked and loved that he will do most anything to make it happen. Like trying to dress in a "folksy" manner by wearing blue jeans instead of his normal suit, or talking about his dad's working class roots with a weird story about spitting nails, etc. They all contribute to an unflattering overall image of more than usual dependency on the current trend.

But then again, his stance on just about every issue displays that same sort of dependency. He was against guns, and then was all for guns; he disliked tax cuts before he claimed he supported them; has been on both sides of the fence about gays and marriage; has roundly condemned the work in stem cell research after giving it the thumbs up earlier. The list goes on and on.

He deserves little respect as a presidential candidate precisely because he is so half-baked. You can't like or dislike him, hate or love him, because in the end he is kind of nothing.

Much as I dislike bumper stickers, I have had an idea for a Romney sticker for a while now, and the impetus to create it only gets stronger by the day. It would simply say, "Vote for me! I've stood for your position at least once!" Or it might as well just say, "Vote for me! I'm the only candidate that has stood for every position at least once."

Even Obama couldn't make that second claim...