Who Vets the Vetters?

The Huffington Post Reports:

WASHINGTON — Presumptive vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan said on Sunday that while he turned over “several years” of tax returns to the Romney campaign during his vetting process, he would only make two years of tax returns public for voters.

The Wisconsin Republican, appearing alongside Romney on “60 Minutes” for their first joint media interview, seemed poised and assured throughout the 15-minute segment. When pressed with a question about tax returns — a topic that has dogged Romney — Ryan had a ready answer.

“It was a very exhaustive vetting process,” he told CBS’s Bob Schiefer. “It is a confidential vetting process. So there were several years. But I’m going to release the same amount of years that Governor Romney has. But I got to tell you Bob — two, I’m going to be releasing two, which is what he’s releasing -– what I hear from people around this country, they are not asking, ‘Where are the tax returns,’ they are asking where the jobs are? Where is the economic growth?”

So John McCain has seen a decade’s worth of Romney’s tax returns, because it was essential to vetting him for a potential VP slot, but We The People don’t get to, even though we’re supposedly vetting him for the presidency? And likewise, Romney demanded that Ryan provide him with “several years” (3, 5, 10?) of tax returns, because it was essential to vetting him for the VP slot, but We The People have to make do with two cherry picked years from each of them?

The only thing one can conclude from this is: there’s politically tone deaf, there’s just plain deaf, and then there’s Mitt Romney.