This morning, I tuned into Fox just in time to hear Willard Romney's latest excuse as to why he won't release any of his tax returns beyond the two that he's released already. As you may recall, one of his previous excuses was that John Kerry only had released his previous two tax returns in 2004. Then half the English-speaking blogosphere mocked him — it's becoming a pastime in half the English-speaking blogosphere, and we may have to organize a competition — by pointing out that Kerry had released all of his returns every time he ran again for the Senate and, therefore, that all of his returns were readily available in 2004 for anyone who wanted to hire undocumented landscapers to go look at them. Now, though, Romney has taken to babbling about how Teresa Kerry didn't release her tax returns, so, therefore, why should he? He also did some first-class whinging about how he's not going to do it because the president's campaign undoubtedly will use something therein for their "opposition research," from which, apparently, Willard would like to be exempt.

All weekend, the question arose: What could possibly be in those tax returns that is so goddamn awful that Romney — who is still, remember, no worse than 50-50 to win this thing — is fighting so hard to keep it secret? The more I think about it, the more I believe that this is the answer to that question.

Nothing.

There is nothing in those tax returns that is in any way illegal. Certainly, there is within them probably a fairly clear illustration about how our tax code — and, indeed, our entire economic system — has been gamed to benefit the folks in Romney's economic stratum, but that's hardly a secret anymore. As Paul Krugman said in this morning's New York Times, that's what this whole election is going to be about, whether the two candidates like it or not. And I don't think Romney's trying to keep secret how much money he's kicked back to his church, either. Anybody who's bothered by that is bothered on theological and cultural grounds. All recent evidence to the contrary, Romney's people, and Romney himself, are not stupid. They know all this as well as anyone else does. He is not fighting the release of these returns to keep us from finding out the dark secrets about how stupid-wealthy he and his family are. He is fighting the release of these returns because he doesn't think he should have to release them.

It is helpful always to remind yourself that, in the mind of Willard Romney, there are only two kinds of people — himself and his family, and The Help. Throughout his career, and especially throughout his brief political career, Romney has treated The Help with a kind of lordly disdain. It was there when he swooped down from snowy Olympus and shoved an incumbent Republican governor named Jane Swift under a train. It was there in the general election in 2002, when he glibly pushed aside the Democratic candidate, state treasurer Shannon O'Brien, who raised almost all the same issues against Romney that the president and his people are belaboring him with today. The only time it didn't work was in his race against Senator Edward Kennedy, when Romney found himself up against a candidate with so much money that he couldn't outspend him, and so much historical gravitas that he couldn't ignore him.

The Help has no right to go pawing through the family books, giggling at the obvious loopholes and tax dodges, running amok through all the tax shelters, and probably getting their chocolate-y fingerprints all over the pages of the Romney family ledger. And, certainly, those members of The Help in the employ of the president of the United States, who is also part of The Help, have no right to use the nearly comically ostentatious wealth of the Romney as some sort of scrimey political weapon. He does not have to answer to The Help. I mean, jeepers, he's running for office.

This isn't stubbornness. That's often an acquired trait. What this is, fundamentally, is contempt. Contempt for the process, and contempt for the people who make their living in that process, and contempt for the people whose lives depend on that process. There are rules for The Help with which Willard Romney never has had to abide, and he has no intention of starting now. My dear young fellow, this simply is not done.

FURTHER ROMNEYFICATION: The Gobshites on Retroactive Retirement and Why His Crony Excuse Ignores His Past

(Photo Illustration by DonkeyHotey via Flickr/Special to The Politics Blog)

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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