The Man Who Settled the Election

Today it’s already commonly known: An ordinary man who most probably changed the course of American history during the recent presidential election is a bartender named Scott Prouty.

If one were to point out one most important thing that settled the election, it would definitely be the famous “47 percent.” In May 2012, in a closed meeting with rich donors from Florida who had to pay $50,000 dollars each to get in, Republican candidate Mitt Romney said: “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. ….[m]y job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

A video clip from the meeting was leaked under mysterious circumstances — much delayed, a little less than two months before the election — and caused a sensation. Barack Obama’s election team had already tried before to present Romney, who is a multimillionaire, as an arrogant man who despises average Americans. It’s hard to imagine better “proof.”

Romney was trying to explain that he had crossed out 47 percent of citizens as potential voters, not as people in a general sense. But the video had catastrophic results. The Republican candidate was commonly derided. Some companies maliciously offered their customers 47-percent discounts on their goods. A great performance in the first television debate, in which Romney decidedly defeated Obama, didn’t help him. He lost the election on November 6, winning — what an irony of fate! — 47 percent of the vote.

Romney admitted two weeks ago in an interview for Fox News that “[i]t kills me not to be there, not to be in the White House doing what needs to be done,” and that the worst blunder of the campaign was exactly those unfortunate 47 percent.

The mystery of the video had not been revealed before Thursday. The videographer is 38-year-old bartender Scott Prouty, who worked that day at the meeting with the donors. He even personally served a Coke with lemon to Romney.

He admitted in an interview with MSNBC that he fought with himself for two weeks, trying to decide whether or not to disclose the video. He was afraid of being sued because Florida state law forbids recording anyone secretly without their permission. He was afraid of being fired for lack of loyalty and discretion (especially blatant when it comes to a bartender).

Eventually, one argument won in the bartender’s internal battle. Prouty said that this man was a presidential candidate. He thought that it was unacceptable that only the people who paid $50,000 dollars had a chance to hear what he really thinks. He felt that it was his duty to disclose this information. In his opinion, keeping the video to himself would be cowardice.

He contacted James Carter, President Jimmy Carter’s grandson, and sent a clip of the video to him. Carter conveyed it in turn to left-wing web portal Mother Jones.

Romney is surely regretting both not biting his tongue and also his excessive trust in people. Mobile phones and video cameras were taken from people at the entrance to a closed meeting with Obama.