So far Mitt Romney is resisting doing what every other presidential candidate in the post-Watergate era has done – releasing an extensive amount of tax returns.
Actually, as has been noted by Democrats, the standard for financial disclosure information was originated by Romney's father George, back when he ran for the Republican nomination for president back in 1968.
The question is: how long before the avalanche of press hounding will compel him to do so?
This is Mitt Romney's fourth time running as a candidate, and the only time he has ever released any year of any tax return was earlier this year under pressure from Newt Gingrich. That was his return for 2010. He is now promising to release his 2011 returns once they are ready.
There is no law that says he has to. And yet it's what virtually every candidate for president has done, in most cases releasing many years of returns.
So it was fascinating to watch Romney surrogates such as Ed Gillespie on CNN's State of the Union and Kevin Madden on Face The Nation answer the question as to why won't he do so? Gillespie tried to finesse that question, as well as others about how long Romney actually served as the head of Bain Capital, with CNN's Candy Crowley on Sunday morning:
This article appears in Jul 12-18, 2012.