Next week’s cover, “Skin Deep,” by Barry Blitt, pays homage to the Norman Rockwell painting “The Tattoo Artist.” We asked Blitt how he came up with this idea. “My grandfather was a Sunday painter, he used to copy a lot of Norman Rockwell paintings, so I was aware of all the classic images at a very young age,” he told us. “Mitt Romney looks like he stepped out of one of those pictures. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine him in many of the wholesome, enduring American situations Rockwell painted. The family in the station wagon before and after their vacation could easily be the Romneys and their five sons (with dog overhead). It’s also not hard to imagine Mitt in college garb—in one of those Rockwell vignettes—cutting that fellow-student’s hair as his buddies held the boy down.”

“ ‘The Tattoo Artist’ features a sailor with a long list of girlfriends’ inked names crossed out on his arm,” he said. “This seemed like a nice tableau for highlighting Mitt the politician’s shifting positions and convictions.”