punks and lack of remorse or even explanation when they get caught lying. they don t correct it when they get called out, don t feel bad about it, don t seem to see it as a problem. case in point, the very first television add run by mr. romney s campaign. we talked about his announcement maiden speech when he launched his campaign, he told a big lie in this case about the economy. not just in his first speech, in his first ad on the romney campaign, he told an absolute black and white, no question full on, blatant lie. i am confident we can steer ourselves out of this crisis. we need a rescue plan for the middle class. we need to provide relief for homeowners. it will take a new direction.
if is the mitt romney era of politics, what should we snoef mitt romney the republican that we should expect to get bigger in a political way. with us is mr. helman of the boston globe. thanks for your time. my pleasure, thanks for having me. i don t expect you to share my analysis. it is clearly my own and not yours. indeed. i wanted to talk to you about your history of reporting on governor romney over his long political career and your research over his political career. have you seen instances where he insisted on political in k inconvenient honesty and chastised people and told advisories to do something although it might be shady and might benefit him. have you seen things that maybe i m not seeing at the presidential level? i can t recall instances like that.
directly to clean up pumps at the gas stations. and then got rid of the purpose for the fund and applied it to the general coffers, all that stuff totally opposite to what he is attacking president obama for on gas prices. is that a case of selective amnesia. he doesn t remember that he s done that or do you think he s hoping the people won t bring that up in his record or the kind of thing he acknowledges he has changed over time? look, at heart, mitt romney is a pragmatist. as we know, he looks at every campaign and situation and figures out what he has to do to succeed in that environment. when he was in massachusetts, it was a very different calculus there. you go back further than that in his gubernatorial campaign, at one point she was asking for a tax on suvs because they use more gasoline.
it is hard to talk about but i think it s important. there is something different about mitt romney as a presidential candidate as compared to every other modern major party presidential candidate, there s a certain amount of lying and stretching the truth and spinning history everybody expects if not tolerates at all levels of politics and on both sides of the aisle. there is something different about the romney campaign. this is an assertion by me and happy to see it challenged. there is something unique about the campaign and that is the frequency with which the candidate himself has been lying during the campaign. his willingness to lie about small stuff that doesn t seem to have political benefit to him, lying for the sake of lying but the campaign s lack of come punks and lack of remorse or even explanation when they get caught lying. they don t correct it when they get called out, don t feel bad about it, don t seem to see it as a problem. case in point, the very first
things mitt romney has lied about as a presidential candidate this time around, things he has been called out on for lying and has not corrected. not that steve has documented 10 lies, 10 volumes of lies, 10 catalogs of lies so far. mr. romney is okay with lying when he runs for president when he gets caught and it is amazing, the most notable thing about his presidency, the thing we have to grapple with as a country, whether this sort of thing is the sort of thing we expect, whether it s okay for somebody running for president or not okay, whether it goes to his character and what we expect of people running nor an office this high. here s the further question. is this not just a character question for mitt romney, that he s okay with lying even when he gets caught? is this instead a standard he will set for his campaign? is this the way the whole pro romney effort is going to be run? is mitt romney leading by