Let’s start with the obvious. Mitt Romney is an attractive, charismatic white man. If there were a real life Batman of some sort, we would have no way to know exactly how old he is now and I feel pretty confident that if you extrapolated Bruce Wayne’s appearance when he was 65, you’d get something startling similar to Romney. He seems to be in excellent physical shape and has won the title of Sexiest Senior unless I dreamed that. Seems very Batman-like, no? Romney’s voice also sounds like that of the Batman, both with that same low pitched raspiness. Imagine the following conversation between Romney and Vice President Joe Biden (The Joker, clearly):
MITT ROMNEY: You'll be in a padded cell forever.
JOE BIDEN: Maybe we can share one. You know, they'll be doubling up, the rate this city's inhabitants are losing their minds.
You just imagined a scene from The Dark Knight, probably exactly as you saw it. Maybe you imagined it taking place in a retirement home, but it’s close enough.
Further, Mitt Romney is filthy rich. If Obama ran on a platform of change, Romney ran on a platform of “Holy shit I’m freaking Wealthy.” He could easily afford all sorts of Bat-shit (Battraptions?) and I think it came as a surprise to everyone when he didn’t stun Obama with a Bat-taser during their second debate. Romney pulling up to the White House in the Batmobile is one of the most strangely easy mental images to conjure up. And as we’ll now explore, this could have very easily been the reality if he came out with this information during the campaign and actively worked this angle.
One of the big stories of the campaign was Obama’s monopoly over the younger vote. Romney made some effort to combat this, - the balancing of his ticket with Paul Ryan for example - but was never particularly successful. We still had (relatively) young (relatively) black Obama, promiser of change against old Mormon Romney, taker of naps. Coming clean about his double life as a caped crusader would have been a quick and easy way to shed this stigma surrounding him.
Within a day of his confession, youth’s interest in Romney would have skyrocketed. People love Batman! Given the mountain of anecdotal evidence suggesting Romney is Batman, he probably wouldn’t require a ton of hard proof to convince everyone. Just foiling a simple bank robbery would suffice. People would flock to his speeches as he arrived on zipline and smacked around a purse snatcher for an hour or so. Then they’d swarm the voting booths to get him into the White House so he can round up al-Assad and uppercut him in the dick.
If the added prestige and allure of being The Dark Knight was not enough, being Batman would have provided Romney with a way of covering up his gaffes. For example:
- “The evil Biden has captured women and is keeping them trapped in binders! I have retrieved the binders but I cannot free the women without getting into the White House.” Or;
- “The dog I tied to the roof of my car was actually a Bat-Dog. He was on watch for crime … For I am Batman! [Hold for applause]”
A simple confession from Mitt Romney about his secret identity would have surely been enough to flip the 2012 election on its head and secure himself a victory. It’s impossible to tell exactly why he didn’t come clean. Perhaps he wanted to leave his life as a masked vigilante behind for a simpler life as U.S President. Though he was unable to become our hero in office, he’ll remain our hero of the night until he gets too old, probably in a few months.