A name is just a name: how Romney disguised a rally as a storm relief event

“When you can't campaign, campaign anyway!”

This seems to be the Romney camp's new slogan in Ohio. Given the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, it would only be appropriate that presidential candidates momentarily leave politics behind, and instead, focus on the victims of a natural disaster. That's why it was only natural that both the Obama and the Romney campaigns cancelled all rallies and other campaign-related events following the hurricane. Instead, Obama, acting as president, travelled to New Jersey, a particularly hard hit state, to assess the damages. Romney, on the other hand, changed his Ohio rally into a storm-relief event. Sweet guy, you might think. Considerate. Won't let politics override his humanity.

Alas, as Shakespeare once wisely penned, “A rose by any other name would swell just as sweet.” And this storm relief event? Well, it's smelling pretty sweetly like a rally.

To start off, apparently at storm relief events you can still show 10-minute biographical videos of Mitt Romney, specifically one that debuted at the Republican National Convention. In the full ten minutes, Romney's background is introduced, people comment on how “charismatic” and “authentic” he is, as well as how great of a leader he will be. You might be thinking, “Hey! Maybe they thought it was appropriate for the occasion!” Perhaps somehow they reckoned Mitt Romney's face flashing on a giant screen for 10 minutes will encourage us to donate an item.

That seems unlikely, and the Romney camp agrees. They actually apologized for this incident, commenting that the video was “accidentally” shown when an authorized person pushed the play button without prior permission. This means like a plausible explanation. If I didn't want a video to be shown, I would physically bring the video, insert the video into some kind of player, and allow the video to play on the entire ten minutes once it has started. Oh, wait. I wouldn't. So, just a heads-up – we do know what scapegoating is (definition: when you blame something on an innocent person so they take the fall for it), because it's what the Nazis did to the Jewish people.

But let's pause for a moment and consider the minuscule possibility that this video was indeed played by some rebel eager to shine Romney's face on the big screen. Let's say the Romney campaigners were just too busy helping out with canned goods, they didn't notice someone creeping over to their system to start a video that must've been in a quite convenient location. So minus the 10-minute biographical video, would this otherwise have been an actual storm relief event?

Ostensibly, yes. Romney's gathering donations. He's thanking the ones who have donated, and grateful for people's contributions.

However, what Romney's camp fails to account for is that the Red Cross doesn't actually want, or need these donations. There's an explicit statement on the charity's website saying they "do not accept or solicit individual donations or collections of items" because processing them requires resources better used on other projects. What they really need are financial or blood donations. Instead, what they received were a lot of canned goods, blankets and diapers.

People want to help, and they do so with pure intentions, and this is not in any way a criticism or a rebuke of these donations. But a leader is supposed to lead, and that means that in times of crises, we turn to them for guidance. Therefore, I don't think it would be too presumptuous to expect a presidential candidate to know exactly is the right kind of help under extremely difficult circumstances. Is Romney so ignorant to have determined that one of the best ways to help is to gather canned donations, or was there something else going on?

While you're busy comtemplating on whether this was fake ignorance on Romney's behalf or not, this part is real – Romney's campaign managers, afraid that not enough people would show up with donations, bought $5,000 worth of canned goods, diapers and other things, so that when people showed up empty-handed, they would have something to “donate.”

This kind of reminds of me of a sad, slightly tragic birthday party, where people forgot to bring presents, and your parents had to buy your presents and then distribute to your friends so your friends can give them to you so you won't look like such a loser.

Not only is that kind of sad, it makes me wonder all sorts of wonders. For example, why was it essential that everyone has to hand over some donated item to Romney? If Romney really wanted to help out, he could have just bought the goods and shipped them off to New Jersey as soon as possible. Instead, he waited until reporters had a chance to witness and photograph people “donating” items to him. I guess no kind deed should ever go unnoticed?

So here are some lessons that I've learned from Romney's brilliant campaign: a name is just a name, like how an apple is really a pear. Show humanity and generosity in times of crises, but make sure everyone sees it. And if no one gives you anything, just go ahead and buy it yourself. Write this down, kids. You'll need it someday.