Letter: Romney should face same standard as Obama

Talk about it

In the July 21 edition of the Daily Globe, Leroy Vetsch made a solid point: Why is Mitt Romney being harassed by the media to release more tax returns than is required by law? Romney has done all he needs to do to comply with the law, and that should be the end of it.

Of course, I asked myself the same question a few years back, when the media — and specifically conservative media outlets — harassed Barack Obama into releasing his birth certificate. I thought it was insane how the legitimacy of his citizenship was so vehemently questioned, as if the fact that he wasn’t an American citizen had somehow slipped past the vetting process.

So in compliance with the law, Obama released his birth certificate, as well as newspaper clippings from Hawaii newspapers announcing his birth. But that was apparently not good enough for the media, who hounded the president to release his long-form birth certificate, which, in compliance with the law, the president did.

Mr. Vetsch ends his letter with the question, “Is there a double standard?” To which I reply, of course there is. Mitt Romney was part of the campaign for President Obama to go above and beyond what the law calls for and release two different versions of his birth certificate. Why shouldn’t Romney go above and beyond the law himself and release more than two years of tax returns?

Tags: opinion, letters, politics