Run 'N Gun Romney

Having used this space recently to beat up on the idea of voting for Barack Obama, I'll turn my attention today to Mitt Romney. It occurs to me to do this because I've stumbled on the analogy that captures my sense of Mr. Romney's campaign. Mitt Romney is the political equivalent of Paul Westhead.

For those who don't know, Paul Westhead is a basketball coach, and a high profile one at that, at least for a time. He came to the attention of people like me during his brief stint as head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, where he took the helm during Magic Johnson's rookie season (1979-80). Despite winning the NBA title in his first year, he was fired after a disappointing finish in the second year. Westhead went on to become the coach at Loyola-Marymount, a moribund college program that won big during his tenure and set multiple records for offensive firepower. He is now the coach of the women's team at the University of Oregon.

I hate the practice of treating political campaigns as sporting events, reducing the deliberative dimensions of an exercise in democratic living to a daily update on who's winning right now (in the polls). But I find this sports analogy irresistible. Westhead's mark of distinction as a coach is his commitment to 'The System' - an offensive philosophy built around unceasing fast breaks. Westhead's unsympathetic critics describe The System as a blatant attempt to outscore the opponent, without regard for playing defense. There is some merit in this description - the point seems to be to coax the opponent into doing more running than they're accustomed to (not having cultivated the endurance that The System requires), so that there's no need for defense: just keep trading shot for shot and the other team will eventually turn the ball over more, and miss more shots, and lose.

Why this reminds me of Romney: Making assertions is like playing offense, and providing plausible arguments and evidence is like playing defense. And Romney is all offense. It's really quite remarkable to watch - not unlike Westhead's Loyola-Marymount teams.