So Romney claims he asked for qualified female candidates for cabinet positions when he became governor. He made it sound as if he was appalled that all the appointees were men. They handed him “binders full of women” when he asked.
Which is a lie. Those binders already existed, put together by a group called MassGAP prior to his election as governor to address exactly this problem—the lack of women in high positions in state government—which were then handed to him by this group upon his election. He didn’t ask for it, he was given it.
He subsequently appointed women to close to 40% of his cabinet. But if you go back and look, they were all heading departments he didn’t give a damn about. All the cabinet posts he did care about went to men and over his four years there was major attrition of women from his administration. (This trend reversed under Deval Patrick, his successor, and incidentally the one who cleaned up the mess Romney had left behind.)
But the thing that struck me upon hearing that was this: after all his years in business, all the achievements he’s been touting, all the “experience” he claims he will bring to the job, do you mean to tell me that he didn’t already know ONE qualified woman to appoint to his cabinet? That he had to ask for recommendations?
He’s making this sound like he’s some kind of progressive—hey, I asked for recommendations for females to appoint!—but the reality is, he evidently didn’t know any. There’s only one way that this could happen—he’s never paid attention.
So what this really says is that he’s clueless, but if elected he promises to get less clueless.
Wow.
