Does Mitt Romney still have a high school bully inside?

Sure, you may know which man -- Mitt Romney or Barack Obama -- you want to see running the country, but which one would you have wanted to know in high school?
We learned four years ago that young Barack was a laid-back, not overly studious kid who loved basketball and occasionally smoked a little weed. The kids at Punahou, the prestigious Honolulu prep school Obama attended, never expected their amiable but seemingly unmotivated classmate to one day become the most powerful man on the planet.

At Cranbrook, the Michigan boarding school Romney attended, there could well have been those who thought young Mitt might amount to something someday. His dad, after all, was governor and was being touted as a candidate for president. But if you were a certain type of student at Cranbrook back in 1965, the idea of Mitt Romney getting any kind of power over people would have been frightening.

A story in the Washington Post based on interviews with several of Romney’s fellow students alleges that young Mitt was a bullying rich kid who had it in for boys who were too different.

One boy, in particular, caught Romney’s attention -- a shy, new kid at the school named John Lauber who had bleached blond bangs that dipped across one eye. According to those interviewed, young Mitt was bugged by Lauber’s hair. “He can’t look like that,” Romney reportedly told one of his friends. “That’s wrong. Just look at him!”

Romney pulled together a pack of boys and went to Lauber’s room, where they tackled him and pinned him down. As Lauber, with tears streaming down his cheeks, screamed for help, Romney pulled out scissors and chopped away at the kid’s hair.

That was the worst, but not the only of Romney’s bullying high school pranks, according to the Post. At least one person suggested young Romney had it in for boys he suspected of being gay.

After Romney’s campaign spokesperson initially denied the story, Romney went on Fox Radio to say he did not remember the incident but that he was sorry about it anyway. “I’m a very different person than I was in high school, of course, but I’m glad I learned as much as I did during those high school years,” he said in the radio interview.

Well, I assume he is different, just as Obama is different from the kid he was. Still, Romney could not seem to suppress a nervous chuckle as he talked about the bullying episode, just as the same chuckle erupts when he talks about firing people. It makes a person wonder if the guy has empathy for people who are different from him, who have not lived the privileged life he has enjoyed.

The rap on Obama has been that he is a little too cool and aloof. The rap on Romney may be that he is just plain callous.