In Brief: No, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan Won't Tell You a Goddamn Thing:
So yesterday Mitt Romney, sadistic Mormon hair-cutter and ostensible GOP nominee for president, had a fundraiser with evil motherfuckers in the energy industry. He has a big energy policy speech coming up and, by god, he told the people- well, why be coy? - men there that "Your input is something I wanted to retain before we actually cross the t's and dot the i's on those policies." Yes, because no one could predict what oil executives would say. When is Romney's meeting with environmentalists and scientists going to be, just so he can get those t's and i's all crossed and dotted? Let's play Carnac here and say that Romney's speech will say, "Drill, frack, Keystone, clean coal, nuclear, and go fuck yourself with a windmill on top of a solar panel."

There's something else Romney said while he wasn't licking sweet crude off the assholes of his donors. About his possible energy plan, he smarmed, "I know that we have members of the media here right now, so I’m not going to go through that in great detail."

Last week, in his big coming out party on Fox "news," vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan talked about the shiny tax loopholes they will get rid of in order to magically balance the budget at some indeterminate time in the future. What loopholes? Hey, fuck you with your specifics. Or, as Ryan said, "[T]hat is something that we think we should do in the light of day, through Congress, unlike how Obamacare was passed. We don't want a back-room deal, what the Ways and Means Committee did, what the House passed, is to have a process for tax reform so that we do this in the front of the public...So, no, the point I'm trying to say is we want to get feedback from Americans about what priorities in the tax code should be kept and what special-interest loopholes we want to get rid of." Or, you know, he could have just said, "No, Brit, I'm not giving up my loophole cherry to you."

It is, at the end, of the day, the strategy for Romney. You can't know much about him or his policies. He will reveal nothing. His advisers have said, flat-out, that they will not campaign on specifics. You have to invest with Romney based on your faith in Romney.

It's held as gospel on right that, despite constant media scrutiny and unending digging, Barack Obama has not been properly "vetted" and has therefore gotten away with something. But Romney presents himself as completely inscrutable, existing only in the present, with his past hidden and his future plans deliberately obscured. That's just the way he wants it, though. It's the only way he can hope to win: to be the empty suit that can be filled with whatever figure you want - crazy social conservative, fiscal disciplinarian, whatever.

It's not really what one would call "leadership." It's not really what one can call anything.