Authenticity or bust?

Mitt Romney won the Atlanticist vote last night by saying he’d bring back a bust of Winston Churchill to the Oval Office. That’s a reference, obviously, to Barack Obama’s decision, soon after moving into the White House, to have the bronze removed.

That decision caused a lot of bother. When the story broke, the Obama machine insisted that the bust’s removal was part of a routine changeover between presidents. But British hacks shouted ‘Anglophobia’ and pronounced the Special Relationship dead. The British embassy in Washington received masses of letters from Americans apologising for this great slight against Britannia. Never in the field of human history has so much been made of so little.

Romney’s pledge to bring back the bust got some applause, and Rick Perry even turned to his rival and said ‘good one’. But not everyone was impressed. “[Romney’s] comments on bringing a bust of Winston Churchill to the White House was just a tad prepackaged,” says Politico’s