An upright man who lies nonstop

The Times' Jodi Kantor is out with a long article about the centrality of faith in Mitt Romney's life and his commitment to living a life of service and rectitude and devotion to God's will as God gives him to see it.

Having read the The Real Romney, a well-documented biography y Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, I don't doubt the truth of this narrative as far as it goes.  What is unfathomable to me is the level of doublethink that will allows an extremely able, intelligent, in many ways generous man who believes that God is watching over him to go out and lie every day, in general concept and in detail -- about his opponent's record and beliefs, about his own past positions, about the inevitable effects of his own purported policies. Steve Benen documents 10-20 verifiable lies per week in his now 18-part series, Mitt's Mendacity (Vol. 17 here).  Paul Krugman has ably captured the full arc of Romney's false narrative about Obama in his op-ed The Post-Truth Campaign. To review Romney's most fundamental and oft-repeated untruths:

Romney's abortion conversion fooled no one in 2005

Challenged on his former support for abortion rights in a recent GOP debate,  Mitt Romney trotted out the tale of his alleged pro-life epiphany.  In November 2004, he met with a Harvard stem cell researcher, who explained to him that his work depended on cloning human embryos. The tale is recounted in Michael Hanish and Scott Helman's The Real Romney:

In Romney’s retelling, Melton coolly explained how his work relied on cloning human embryos. “He said, ‘Look, you don’t have to think about this stem cell research as a moral issue, because we kill the embryos after fourteen days,’ ” Romney would later say. Melton afterward vigorously denied Romney’s characterization of the meeting, saying, “We didn’t discuss killing or anything related to it.” Melton said, “I explained my work to him, told him about my deeply held respect for life, and explained that my work focuses on improving the lives of those suffering from debilitating diseases.” 

But for Romney, it was a seminal day, triggering what he describes as an awakening on “life” issues after he had spent his entire political career espousing very different views. In the official account of Romney’s rebirth as a social conservative, the meeting with Melton would become the Genesis story. On February 10, 2005, three months after his meeting, Romney came out strongly against the cloning technique, saying in a New York Times interview that the method breached an “ethical boundary.” He vowed to press for legislation to criminalize the work. Romney’s opposition stunned scientists, lawmakers, and observers because of his past statements endorsing, at least in general terms, embryonic stem cell research. Six months earlier, his wife, Ann, had publicly expressed hope that stem cells would hold a cure for her multiple sclerosis (locations 4471--4482).

Romney took his transformation to the next level in July 2005, when he vetoed a bill making the morning-after pill available over the counter and mandating that hospitals make it available to rape victims.  This from a governor who had pressed his pro-choice credentials in the 2002 campaign, as well as in his 1994 run for the Senate.  In an op-ed published in the Boston Globe on July 26, 2005, Romney claimed he vetoed the bill because the pill would not simply prevent conception "would also terminate a living embryo after conception" (recalling his objection to creating embryos for stem cell research).  He claimed then, as he has recently in debates, that 

Mitt Romney, community organizer

Among the various predicaments that Mitt Romney finds himself in just now, perhaps the most politically toxic is the widespread perception that he is an out of touch tycoon who spent his entire life in Richistan and knows nothing about the lives of ordinary people. It's not true.

One irony compounds another. Seeking the nomination of a party that puts a premium on praying loudly in the public square, Romney is the only candidate with pastoral experience -- very substantive experience engaging with the spiritual and material lives of others, in his role as the Mormon equivalent first of a parish priest and then a bishop of the greater Boston area.  Yet this is the one aspect of his biography that Romney will not pawn or parlay for political gain. He has done all he can to pander to every Tea Party predilection except this one -- the thirst for intense commitments of faith.

Mormons do not have a paid clergy; church members rotate in positions of leadership.  Romney was first a "ward" leader in his home community of Belmont, MA and then a "stake" leader in the Boston area -- the Mormon equivalent of a bishop. The Real Romney, a biography by Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, recounts several incidents that illustrate the extent to which these were hands-on leadership positions, particularly as executed by Romney.  Below, a sampling. The first three involve apparently wealthy or comfortable neighbors in Belmont. The last takes him into the immigrant communities of Boston.

Everyone who has known Romney in the church community seems to have a story...about him and his family pitching in to help in ways big and small. They took chicken and asparagus soup to sick parishioners. They invited unsettled Mormon transplants to their home for lasagna. Helen Claire Sievers and her husband once loaned a friend from church a six-figure sum and weren't getting paid back, putting a serious financial strain on the family. Suddenly they couldn't pay their daughter's Harvard College tuition. Romney, who was stake president at the time, not only worked closely with Sievers's family and the loan recipient to try to resolve the problem, he offered to give Sievers and her husband money and tried to help her find a job. "He spent an infinite amount of time with us, all the time we needed," Sievers said. "It was way above and beyond what he had to do."