MITT ROMNEY MAKES THE SUPREME SACRIFICE

James Fallows thinks it's wrong that people are snarking off about Mitt Romney's plane gaffe. You know about the gaffe, right?

Ann Romney's plane was grounded Friday after the main cabin filled with smoke. The small electrical fire caused no injuries, but apparently did cause the Presidential candidate to forget the dangers of altitude.

"When you have a fire in an aircraft, there's no place to go, exactly," he told the LA Times. "And you can't find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don't open. I don't know why they don’t do that. It's a real problem."

Air crafts do not open windows because the cabins are pressurized to fly safely at an altitude of tens of thousand feet. Opening a window in an airplane would seriously sicken the passengers and crew.

Fallows thinks it's hard not to make gaffes when there's constantly a microphone under your nose. OK, fine. Fallows thinks we should cut Romney a break because the dangerous situation his wife was involved in shook him up. Yes, fine. Fallows says extemporaneous speaking isn't Romney's strong suit. Yes, yes, yes.

But this passage from Fallows annoys me:

I have an irrational fear and dislike of horses -- even though many members of my family were avid riders....

Here's why I mention this. I have heard over the years, within the flying world, that Mitt Romney views airplanes more or less the way I view horses. He is (I have heard) not a happy or comfortable flyer, and one who can always imagine things going wrong. Fortunately I don't actually have to ride horses -- but he has no choice but to fly, white-knuckled, from one stop to the next. Someone with this outlook would naturally be all the more rattled by an emergency landing. So cut him all the more slack.

No, James -- it's not true that Romney "has no choice but to fly." He chose to run for president -- in fact, he chose to spend the last six years of his life running for president. I didn't ask him to. You didn't ask him to. He could be spending his days playing with his grandkids and lubing his car elevator. But no -- he chose this particular endeavor, which requires him to fly day after day after day. If being president is what he wants, then he should just suck it up and never utter a peep about how uncomfortable flying makes him, because nobody put a gun to his head and compelled him to do all this flying. It was his choice.