Mitt Romney deigned to answer questions about his tax returns today, assuring reporters at a news conference that he had never paid less than 13 percent of his income in taxes in the last decade. That’s considerably lower than the rate many middle-class families pay, but what’s really remarkable is that Mr. Romney now expects the public to accept his word and move on.

He thinks today’s statement is an effective counterweight to Senator Harry Reid’s equally unsubstantiated charge that Mr. Romney paid no taxes in several previous years.



At some level, Mr. Romney doesn’t seem to understand that voters don’t automatically trust the assurances and promises of politicians. He and his wife seem genuinely shocked that they are being pressed to provide paperwork about the details of their financial lives.

“They have to understand that Mitt is honest,” Ann Romney told NBC News this week. “His integrity is just golden.” Why, she seemed to be saying, can’t people see my husband the way I see him? “There’s nothing we’re hiding,” she said.

A long tradition of American political scandal has made voters wary of any candidate’s assertion of honesty. It’s especially important for Mr. Romney to practice transparency given his history of using obscure and extensive tax shelters–unavailable to the wage-earning public.

But more broadly, this haughty trust-me attitude—why can’t we escape these pestering questions and run on our own obvious goodness and decency?—extends to the rest of Mr. Romney’s campaign. He’s not just keeping his old tax returns secret. His tax plan is so vague that analysts can’t score it without making broad assumptions. He won’t admit that his government-contraction program will require cuts to popular programs. He hasn’t told the truth about the difference between Mr. Ryan’s proposed Medicare cuts and President Obama’s, and voters are starting to realize it.

Last week, he released an ad accusing the president of ending the work requirement for welfare that was blatantly false.

If Mr. Romney wants voters to trust him on how much he paid in taxes, he needs to give them better reasons to trust his campaign for president.