Romney's tax returns show one thing only

Americans are impatient. We look for the quick take-away, the executive summary, the timesaving "nut graph" that keeps us from having to read all the details.

Unfortunately, we have spent most of the past week trying to do this with the U.S. income tax system. That's like trying to master Mandarin Chinese in a five-minute lesson, define the universe in 25 words or less or lose weight through finger exercises.

The tax code fills about 73,000 pages. If you're into visual images, you could give one page to every football fan in a sold out Lavell Edwards Stadium and still have nearly 10,000 pages left over.

A nation that demands its presidential candidates release their income tax returns, which otherwise are kept private by law, ought to do so for only two reasons. One is to determine whether the candidate is a law-abiding taxpayer. The second, and far less important, reason is to glean some sort of insight into the candidate's character. Did the candidate try to reduce his tax obligation through some strange or contorted deduction? (One business owner deducted the cost of a yacht because he said he needed it to impress and attract new business clients, according to a list of interesting deductions posted on efile.com.)

Did the candidate give to charity and, if so, how much? That says much about a person's inner convictions.

Mitt Romney ought to have scored big on that one. His returns showed he gave $7 million to charity in 2010 and '11, including his church. That was several hundred thousand more than what he paid in taxes.

Because the only fair way to examine this is by percentage of income, Romney donated 16 percent of his income to charity compared to Newt Gingrich's 2.6 percent.

That's it, folks. That's the end of the relevant lessons to be learned.

But no, we want to learn Chinese through Professor Harold Hill's "think method."

Pundits and other candidates have been fixated on the amount Romney earned, awed the way a museum visitor might be at the Hope Diamond.

Americans, then, are not only impatient, they are marvelously contradictory. We want a president who understands the world, but we become unsure of someone who speaks a foreign language. We want a Washington outsider who knows how to get things done in Washington. And we want someone who is a successful leader, but not too successful.

The candidate should show he understands the common person's plight, although we wouldn't really want someone like us — up to his ears in car payments, with a big mortgage and credit card debt.