The American Debate: Why the Seamus story matters

Every dog has his day. And even though Seamus the dog has been dead for several decades, his day is now.

And that's not good news for Mitt Romney, who continues to be dogged by the true-life tale of how he crated and strapped Seamus to the car roof for a 12-hour family trip way back in the first term of Ronald Reagan's tenure. You probably know the rest of the story. Seamus made poopy, it ran down the window, the kids yelled "Dad, gross!" Dad detoured to a gas station, hosed everything down, reinstalled Seamus on the roof, and hit the road again.

One of his sons retailed this anecdote for a newspaper profile that ran in 2007, and it has since entered the popular culture - with herculean help from New York Times columnist Gail Collins; David Letterman (his latest: "It was such a beautiful day today, Mitt Romney was riding on the roof of his car"); Saturday Night Live; the Dogs Against Romney group's Facebook page; Fox News (where dog-owning Chris Wallace once asked Mitt, "What were you thinking?"); the March 12 cover of the New Yorker; and, perhaps most notably, rivals Newt Gingrich (who released a Web ad titled "For the Dogs") and Rick Santorum.

Santorum's spokeswoman said earlier this week, "If you can't be nice to your dog, who are you going to be nice to?" His chief strategist brought up Seamus last week: "I sit there like every other American and say, 'What the heck was he thinking, putting the dog on the top of the roof?' " And last Sunday, Santorum himself said that the dog story was of great import: "The issues of character are important in this election. We need to look at all those issues and make a determination as to whether that's the kind of person you want to be president of the United States."

OK, you're probably thinking: Why bother with such trivia? If we want to examine Mitt Romney, might our time not be better spent discussing his stint at Bain Capital, where he mastered the venture-capital intricacies of depreciation and amortization? Aren't there far more crucial issues at stake than a traumatized Irish setter?

Of course. But never underestimate the power of political shorthand. Even issue-oriented voters look for character clues - anecdotes and impressions that give them a sense of who the person really is. Where a candidate stands on the issues is important, but voters also want to gauge their personal comfort level, to get a feel for whether the aspiring president "gets" them, and vice versa.

This is why the Seamus story matters. It allows voters to weigh Romney on an everyday human scale. Need I point out that dogs are iconic in this culture, from Lassie to Uggie? From Fala to Bo? Put simply, millions of dog owners in America would set their hair on fire before they'd consign the family pooch to the roof of the car for 12 hours. The political risk for Romney is that the story is shorthand for "weird." It makes him look very different from you and me. As Douglas Gross, a former Romney campaign aide, reportedly said the other day, "It's another one of those things about Mitt that seems otherworldly."

Romney is not the first candidate to be hurt by an anecdote. Which is my point. John Edwards, prior to his sex scandal, was irrevocably typecast as an effete pretty boy because of the story about his "$400 haircut" and the viral YouTube video showing him primping for a TV appearance. John Kerry in 2004 was successfully typed by the GOP as different from you and me when photos showed him windsurfing. George H.W. Bush in 1992 was successfully painted by the Democrats as cluelessly remote from real life, thanks to the well-circulated story about how he'd gazed in wonder at a supermarket checkout scanner.

Romney has been trying to tamp down the story for years. He was downright voluble when Fox News first asked him about it: "This is a completely airtight kennel, mounted on the top of our car. He climbed up there regularly, enjoyed himself, he was in a kennel at home a great deal of the time as well. We loved the dog, it was where he was comfortable and we had five kids inside the car and my guess is he liked it a lot better in his kennel than he would have liked it inside."

But now the candidate's in stonewall mode. When the Wall Street Journal brought up the story this past winter, he replied: "Uh, love my dog. That's all I've got for ya."

Fairly or not, the story has done some political damage. According to a new national poll, 35 percent of voters say the Seamus affair makes them less likely to support Romney, while 7 percent are more likely. So perhaps his only solution at this point is to own the story, to make the weirdness work for him:

"A nuclear Iran is unacceptable! Its leaders should know that I mean business! If I was willing to put my own dog on the roof of my car, imagine what I would do to Ahmadinejad!"

Hey, I think I'm onto something.

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