“I did go back and look at my taxes and over the past ten years I never paid less than thirteen per cent. I think the most recent year is 13.6 or something like that,” Mitt Romney said yesterday, sounding as if he had just earned a gold star, as if thirteen per cent was what he might call a magnificent sum. “So I pay taxes every single year.” Then, after suggesting that he had thus put Harry Reid, who had said he’d heard otherwise, in his place, Romney added,

And if you add in addition the amount that goes to charity, why the number gets well above twenty per cent.

This suggests several questions, beyond the basic one of why Romney doesn’t just release the returns, since he seems to have pulled them out of the files to “look” at them. Some are technical: What does he mean by taxes? (There has been a fair amount of talk of people who pay plenty in payroll taxes paying no federal income tax at all.) And thirteen per cent of what? Income, at Romney’s level, has a habit of transforming itself into something else. (See James B. Stewart’s look at the releases of the America’s top four hundred earners, some of whom did not, in fact, pay any taxes.) Also, what is the name for the category he refers to as “the number”—the sum of taxes and charity? Those are, after all—and one hopes that Romney recognizes this—two different things.

[Update: On Friday evening, the campaign released Paul Ryan’s 2010 and 2011 returns—more than Romney, who has released only 2010, plus a 2011 estimate; Ryan also paid higher rates: just under sixteen and twenty per cent, respectively.]

Will this make it more or less likely that we’ll see the tax returns? Romney has now put himself in a spot: if he has not, in fact, paid thirteen per cent in federal income taxes on an amount that resembles his income for those years (accounting for what are surely arcane exemptions, but at least in terms that are comparable to those used when talking about his 2010 taxes) then he will either seem like a liar or like a man who can’t even figure out what’s on his own tax returns. Alternately, he’ll never release them. For that reason, one hopes that Romney was right about the thirteen per cent, because there are many other things voters could and should learn from his releases. One ought to know where a candidate’s financial obligations are, and for what and to whom he can be thankful.

Instead, we have a strange game going on. Can Romney’s allies like it when Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, is able to send messages like this one to his counterpart, Matt Rhoades?

If the governor will release five years of returns, I commit in turn that we will not criticize him for not releasing more—neither in ads nor in other public communications or commentary for the rest of the campaign.

Rhoades, in response, did little more than complain about the continued requests.

So did Ann Romney, in an interview yesterday on Rock Center. Her answers were revealing—perhaps about more than simply taxes. Natalie Morales asked her about the returns, and the need for transparency:

Ann Romney: Have you seen how we’re attacked? Have you seen what’s happened? Natalie Morales: It’s been in the press quite a bit; now are you angry that it’s been in the press? I mean, should you not be questioned about your finances? Ann Romney: We have been very transparent to what’s legally required of us. But: the more we release, the more we get attacked. The more we get questioned, the more we get pushed. And so we have done what’s legally required, and there’s going to be no more, there’s going to be no more tax releases given. And there’s a reason for that, and that’s because of how, what happens as soon as we release anything.

Watching the video (below) it does not appear that this was said with much patience (or humility). After talking about how “Mitt is honest, his integrity is just golden,” Ann made the same charity point that her husband did:

Ann Romney: We pay our taxes, we are absolutely—beyond paying our taxes, we also give ten per cent of our income to charity. and so we have no issues that way. And the only reason we don’t disclose any more is, you know, we’ll just become a bigger target Natalie Morales: So it’s because you’ll just continue to face more questions? Ann Romney: Well, it will only give them more ammunition.

What is troubling here is less the mystery of what “ammunition” there might be than the general attitude about public disclosure that it betrays. Take her first answer, and substitute the phrases “information on drone attacks” or “background on detention”—to name two areas in which President Obama has, rightly, been criticized for a lack of transparency. (See Steve Coll for more on that.) Take any issue of importance or complexity. Do the Romneys—or Obama—understand that questioning and pushing are the substance of democracy? Romney says that he’ll read the forms for us, as if all the numbers would be too complicated for us to grasp, or would make us dizzy: we’d only be confused by all those perfectly legal shelters. He might give the public a chance; he’s asking us to give him one.

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