The endless countdown to Election Day

Time does go by quickly. Our children grow up and finish college in the blink of an eye. Our time at work passes just as rapidly, and before we know it, we’re talking about retirement. The only thing that seems to be going painfully slow is the current election cycle. It seems to be dragging on forever.

Like it or not, there are six-plus months until Election Day, and by any standard, that’s a very long time. The Republican primary contests have been cooking for over a year, and umpteen debates later, we’re now finally seeing the emergence of the so-called presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney. Romney’s coronation won’t be official, however, until he gets the nomination and he picks his running mate.

Romney’s biggest problem is that, at this point, there’s no secret who he is and where he comes from. While some voters will have forgotten all of the nasty things said about him by Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich during the primaries, others who have their doubts won’t be very enthusiastic about him as president.

So the burden is on candidate Romney to find ways to get independent voters and bloc groups to give their cherished vote to him come November. For now we know a lot of things about Romney that don’t add up to an electoral landslide. He’s rich. Some people say he’s worth $250 million or more. In most cases that would be a plus, but somehow he seems embarrassed to talk about how he made all that money.

Romney has yet to make the case that he worked hard to accumulate wealth and it wasn’t handed to him. The general public knows that he’s in the very low 19 percent tax bracket. It also knows that he has Swiss bank accounts and other offshore investments. If I were a candidate for public office, I suspect that the voters wouldn’t embrace me after hearing about my dollars being hidden in Switzerland.

By now most people are aware of the fact that once upon a time, Romney drove to Canada with his Irish setter in a carrier tied to the roof. The New York Times columnist Gail Collins has made mentions of the dog-on-the-roof incident dozens of times over the past two years, and it’s now a frequent topic for late-night comedians. So between now and Election Day, Romney will have to make peace with fervent dog lovers.