Charles, it takes a leap of faith the believe anything Romney says. I know you’ve decided on him as your guy, but the fact is, he has a pattern of making false or misleading statements.
It doesn’t really matter what Broder wrote... actually, if it does, it’s more damning to Romney because he’s relying on a third-party account as part of his own “personal memory” that he’s speaking from.
In the past, he completely lied about the subject, inserting himself as well as his father into the image. He no longer stands by that story, but uses a watered-down version where his memory of seeing it happen (when it never did) is still the defining event of the story.
So, even if he has managed to delude himself that it’s actually true, and therefore not technically a lie but rather a fantasy, there’s still no reason for anyone to give him the benefit of the doubt on the subject, because has has lied about the same thing in the past, and he includes similar embellishments in other “personal” anecdotes.
How do you think people “remember” things from 30 years ago, if not mostly from proddings of contemporaneous and other items?
My memory of 30 years ago is sketchy. If I sit down with my family and we talk about some event, others might correct me on some point, and we’ll decide they are right about it. But are they? If not, have I just committed your cardinal sin of relying on someone else to prod my personal memory?
I don’t know how old you are. I’m in my late 40s. I can’t tell you how many times we will be telling a story, and we break out the slides, and it’s like “That’s not how I remembered that at all”.
People here are acting like “personal memory” is the strongest and most reliable, and thus “proof” that there is deliberation. In fact, personal memory is about the weakest and most fallable, and proof of nothing.
That a lot of people have fun with it when they are attacking liberals doesn’t change the basic fact that personal memories are almost always wrong.
BTW, people sometimes lie to their diary, but years later they will think its the truth, because they use the diary to help their recollection.
Look at a court case, and you’ll see people say they aren’t sure or give some piece of testimony under oath, and then the lawyer will provide written evidence to “help them recollect”, like maybe the report that they wrote, and then they can get it right.
In my opinion, the only mistake Romney could make here is to take this too seriously, rather than simply noting the story doesn’t appear to have been true and moving on. Mistken memories that are favorable to a person are hardly a character flaw, they are human.
I feel sad for people whose memories are unfavorable to them.