Mystery solved: The bartender did it
The Center for Responsive Politics estimates that a record $6 billion was raised during the 2012 presidential campaign. Yet, all it took was a bartender armed with little more than a tiny camera to counter that mountain of campaign cash.
Mitt Romney’s propensity for making unforced errors kept his campaign on the defense from the time he announced his candidacy. Try as he did, he couldn’t overcome the lingering perception that he’s not one of us; that the world would be a much better place if only the well-heeled ran it.
Then came last May 17. That’s the day he pitched his case to some of those “well-heeled” donors in Boca Raton, Fla. He’d gone with open-hands, and a closed-mind, seeking campaign money.
“There are 47 percent who are with him (President Obama), who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them. Who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing … My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” he said with the most important 70 words of the 2012 campaign.
On their face, Romney’s words were false. But it was the casual way in which Romney openly discounted people of lesser means – “My job is not to worry about those people” – that set off a firestorm when the video tape of his speech was released in September, that re-energized Obama’s campaign.
The bartender who shot that video, Scott Prouty, hadn’t intended to embarrass Romney when he set-up his camera. The reason he took his camera to work that day was because he’d hoped to get video of him glad-handing Romney.
Months after the election, and while the full measure of that clandestine video is still being assessed, there’s far more to add to the story.
First, his inspiration for trying to have pictures of him standing next to a presidential candidate came from (I’m pretty sure Republicans won’t like this) – Bill Clinton.
According to Scott Prouty, he once worked at an event in which Clinton spoke. Afterwards the former president went into the kitchen and thanked the help for their efforts. He graciously thanked waiters, bartenders, busboys and anybody who had a hand in putting the event together.
But after his historic blunder, according to Prouty, Romney was in too much of a hurry to be bothered with anything like thanking workers. Since Prouty was working while Romney spoke, he didn’t watch the full tape until later.
“I felt it was a civic duty. I couldn’t sleep after I watched it,” he said. “I felt like I had a duty to expose it.”
Well, it did get exposed – and how. The fallout from that 47-percent tape lasted until Election Day.
There’s even more to the story than a former president indirectly helping the current president get re-elected, and the offhanded way that other presidential candidate spoke of the poor when he thought nobody “important” was listening.
Prouty hadn’t wanted to reveal that he was, in fact, the man who pressed the record, button and single-handedly ignited the upheaval of a multi-billion dollar presidential campaign.
He’d been content to remain as anonymous as Bob Woodward’s “Deep Throat” had been for decades. But it was Romney, himself, who brought Scott Prouty out from the shadows.
It seems that on March 3, when Romney appeared on Fox News, he claimed that what he said about those supposed government-leaching, entitled, irresponsible people “was a very unfortunate statement that I made.” And when he said, “What I said is not what I believe,” Prouty had had enough.
He’d been in that room. He’d recorded and watched the entire, offensive speech. He obviously knew that what Romney said is EXACTLY what he believes. For Romney, it was one of those unfortunate days when he (not unlike many of his fellow Republicans) would become a victim of his own lousy rhetoric.
And the country is far better for it.
Uniontown native Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net
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