Mitt Romney clearly believes that he is above the rules to which the rest of us peasants are subject. He thinks that he can be as nasty as he wants, but if his opponent should respond in kind, then Romney pitifully demands apologies. Yesterday, in a monumental display of arrogance, Romney spoke of his dismay over negative, personal advertising directed at him with out so much as a nod to his own harsh personal attacks. An interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd was presented thusly…

“This is business not personal: Romney also said in the interview he would like a pledge (of sorts) with Obama that there be no ‘personal’ attack ads. ‘[O]ur campaign would be – helped immensely if we had an agreement between both campaigns that we were only going to talk about issues and that attacks based upon — business or family or taxes or things of that nature.”

So all Obama has to do is promise not to campaign. After all, Romney has made his business career the core of his justification for running for president. But now he doesn’t want Obama to mention it. And since Romney isn’t discussing the Olympics or his term as governor of Massachusetts either, that doesn’t leave much for Obama talk about.

And what has Romney promised to do in return? Nothing. He offered no concession whatsoever to entice Obama into accepting this proposal. He certainly didn’t offer to stop taking mangled, out-of-context quotes and reshaping them into lies about Obama’s agenda. However, he did make a veiled threat about “dredg[ing] up the old stuff that people talked about last time around.” Presumably he means birtherism, Rev. Wright, and palling around with terrorists. But he would never get personal, would he?

This is just another example of Romney demanding a separate set of rules for himself as well as a having an acute lack of honesty with regard to his own misdeeds – as this video makes plain: