Can Mitt Ride His Mane To The Republican Nomination-- It Didn't Do Much For Bachmann

Perhaps the New York Times will pull the strands of widespread and generalized OccupyWallStreet discontent with the career of Mitt Romney once we get a little closer to the election. Or maybe not. For now, though, it's all about Mitt Romney's hair. They ran this yesterday, not on April Fool's Day:

By far his most distinctive physical feature, Mr. Romney’s head of impeccably coifed black hair has become something of a cosmetological Rorschach test on the campaign trail, with many seeing in his thick locks everything they love and loathe about the Republican candidate for the White House. (Commanding, reassuring, presidential, crow fans; too stiff, too slick, too perfect, complain critics.)

Mr. Romney’s advisers have been known to fret about the shiny strands, and his rivals have sought to turn them against him. Asked by the late-night-television host Jimmy Fallon on Monday what word she associated with Mr. Romney, a businessman, Olympics executive and governor, Representative Michele Bachmann replied, “Hair.”

Nobody has a more complicated and intimate relationship with Mr. Romney’s hair than the man who has styled it for more than two decades, a barrel-chested, bald Italian immigrant named Leon de Magistris.

For years, Mr. de Magistris said in an interview, he has tried to persuade Mr. Romney, 64, to loosen up his look by tousling his meticulous mane.

“I will tell him to mess it up a little bit,” said Mr. de Magistris, 69. “I said to him, ‘Let it be more natural.’ ”

The suggestion has not gone over well. “He wants a look that is very controlled,” Mr. de Magistris said. “He is a very controlled man. The hair goes with the man.”

Mr. Romney’s is a restrained, classic look: short at the neck, neat on the sides and swept back off the forehead. “It is not something stylish,” Mr. de Magistris noted. “It is clean and conservative.”

The cut is so recognizable that men in this well-heeled suburb of Boston ask for it by name. “The Mitt,” they whisper to Mr. de Magistris from the red vinyl chairs in his upscale salon, Leon & Co., a few blocks from the sprawling home where Mr. Romney raised his family.

Mr. de Magistris, who gave Mr. Romney a $70 trim three weeks ago, agreed to share some of the secrets behind his most famous client’s coiffure in between haircuts the other day.

No, he said, Mr. Romney does not color his hair. Any such artificial enhancement, Mr. de Magistris said, “is not-- what do you call it?-- in his DNA.”

Despite holding its shape under all but the most extreme conditions, it is gel and mousse-free. “I don’t put any product in there,” he avowed.

Greg Sargent, also on the Romney beat, wasn't in that same kind of superficial mood the Times had decided to waste its time on. He was getting to the bottom of an important character flaw, Romney's willingness to lie without batting an eye.

A reader emails me an explanation as to why Mitt Romney’s campaign aired that ad ripping Obama’s words out of context in an almost comically brazen and dishonest way:

The reason Romney went uber-negative and put out the ad which lied about President Obama’s words was very simple and strategically brilliant: to signal to the right-wing conservatives that he, Romney, will go to any lengths, say anything, bear all criticisms, to defeat Obama.

This interpretation is practically supported by what the Romney camp itself has said about the ad. Romney advisers have proudly boasted that their dishonesty “worked,” because it secured more media attention for the ad and baited the Obama team into an all-out response, creating the impression of a head-to-head media showdown between Romney and the President. It’s only a tiny leap from there to the conclusion that the Romney camp saw the dishonesty itself as a way to prove to GOP primary voters that Romney will do whatever it takes to beat Obama. And if this is the game, then the Romney camp’s unrepentance in the face of widespread media condemnation only helps, signaling that Romney is willing to employ whatever tactics are necessary to end the Obama presidency even if it means bravely taking a sustained beating from the Obama-worshipping liberal media along the way.

Sargent called them out for... lying about their lying! He sees their boasting about the strategic brilliance of blatantly lying as nothing but bluster. "If they’re willing to run an ad this dishonest, why would anyone believe anything they say about it? It’s more likely that they lied, got caught, and came up with another set of falsehoods to explain the lie away." Or maybe they do just want to show hard core GOP base voters how deliberately sleazy and dishonest they're willing to be. That kind of stuff seems to go over in some circles better than the well-coifed head.