A New York Times columnist expressed regret over mocking Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah, during his presidential race, considering how much "worse" Donald Trump is.
New York Times opinion columnist Gail Collins published a piece on Thursday admitting she was wrong to mock 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney during his campaign, especially considering how much worse she thought the subsequent Republican candidate, Donald Trump, ended up being.
As part of The New York Times’ novel "I Was Wrong" series of opinion columns published Thursday – where the outlet featured columns from eight different columnists admitting what they’ve been most wrong about in their recent political coverage – Collins claimed she was wrong about smearing Romney so extensively.
She wrote, "I’ve been thinking about columns I’ve come to regret over the years. Hmm, lots of potential there. But let me go back to Mitt Romney. When Romney was running for president, I tried to see how many times I could find a way to mention that the candidate once drove to Canada with a dog strapped to the roof of his car."
Collins mentioned that back then she had been tasked with "writing diverting columns about 2012 presidential race, which featured Romney versus then-incumbent Barack Obama," so Romney’s quirks provided content for her.
New York Times' Gail Collins wrote a column stating she was "wrong" to mock Mitt Romney extensively during his presidential campaign. (AP)
Describing the former Republican candidate, she wrote, "Romney had gotten national attention as the Massachusetts moderate who pushed through a breakthrough state public health care plan that became a prelude to Obamacare, but he suddenly lost interest in that kind of thing and began referring to himself as ‘a severely conservative Republican governor.'"
"This will give you an idea of both his politics and his verbal dexterity," Collins added.
She also mentioned one of Romney’s verbal stumbles, writing, "Those of us who were around then also won’t forget his claim that as governor he pressed for more sexual balance in staff hiring and got himself ‘binders full of women.’"
Granted, the columnist admitted that the 2012 campaign was "extremely boring, and I really did have to stretch to find some fun ways to approach it." She provided the example of having to dig to find out that Romney’s opponent, Obama, was a "mediocre poker player."
Though she admitted that finding dirt on Romney "was the real challenge," hence why she slammed Romney in print over the dog story "more than 80 times," according to people she said counted.
Collins expressed some shame about harping on this story about Romney, among others, writing, "The campaign progressed. And I was getting kind of desperate. I’m sure you’ve long since blocked it out of your memory banks, but Romney was a truly sleep-inducing candidate. It was sort of a high point when he mentioned that he cared desperately about ‘Americans’ except, um, not ‘the very poor.’"
"When Romney was running for president, I tried to see how many times I could find a way to mention that the candidate once drove to Canada with a dog strapped to the roof of his car," wrote NY Times' Gail Collins. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
But now she has seen what a "way worse" Republican candidate can be, She wrote, "Donald Trump got elected president and those of us who make fun of politicians for a living moved into a land of perpetual opportunity."
Compared to Trump – who, she reminded, still claims "the election was stolen," is doing a "happy dance for the N.R.A. conventioneers," and "bragging that on his watch Putin ‘would never, ever have gone into Ukraine’" – Collins thought Romney looked great in retrospect.
"Romney is now in the Senate, where he was the only Republican who voted to remove Trump from office during both of his impeachments and, recently, was the only Republican to vote against repealing Joe Biden’s mask mandate," Collins claimed, praising his actions.
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Granted Collins lamented that Romney "supports Mitch McConnell and his party’s agenda. If you don’t agree with that, it’s hard to get all that nostalgic about what might have been.
"But the one lesson I take away from my Seamus period is that there are some things that are way worse than boring," she concluded, implying that Romney was preferable to the 45th president.
Collins claimed that President Donald Trump is "way worse" than "boring" Romney could ever be.
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