Good news! I’ve just read Mitt Romney’s 2010 book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. That means you don’t have to.

The title is nonsense. Here’s the fantasy scenario that’s supposed to explain it. First, Romney declares that the USA is better than everyone else in the world. Second, Romney refuses to apologize for believing it. (Here I envision Romney striking a pose.)

Right, that happens all the time. Who asked Romney to apologize? Well, once a Canadian sort of did.

“It is not uncommon to hear an American claim that the United States is the greatest nation on earth and the hope of the world. …when a Canadian colleague chided me for making the statement, I said that I was sorry he had been offended. But I did not say I was sorry for having said it—because I believe it.” (Page 293.)

I doubt the Canadian colleague was won over. Also, “My European friends have confessed that they find this sentiment both naïve and offensive.” Great. Sounds like a recipe for foreign affairs disasters.

Romney believes in “American exceptionalism,” which he says means “America has a special place and role in the world.” He complains on page 29 that when President Obama was asked, he said, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Tactful. What’s wrong with that? Romney fumes: “Which is another way of saying he doesn’t believe it at all.” Not really – Obama continued “I am enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world.” Plus more bragging about freedom of speech, equality, the founding documents, etc. Sounds like exceptionalism.

Romney does say America is not perfect. But “our past faults and errors have long been acknowledged and do not deserve the repetition that suggests either that we have been reluctant to remedy them or that we are inclined to repeat them.” (Maybe we haven’t always been perfect, but now we are.)

This is meant to contrast with the far-right claim that Obama made an “apology tour.” Romney makes this claim early, on page 25. He calls it “President Obama’s American Apology Tour.” Not “what I like to call ‘President Obama’s American Apology Tour’” or “what my new Tea Party friends decided to call ‘President Obama’s American Apology Tour.’” From the book you might think it was a real thing. But it didn’t happen.

While Romney may like to go through Obama’s speeches, pick phrases out of context, gripe about the tone, and argue that it’s too apologetic, he must know that others don’t agree. Yet he asserts that there was an “American Apology Tour” as a fact. So how can we believe anything in his book if we don’t check it? This is, after all, a book with a long discussion of domestic oil drilling in which the word and the concept of “fracking” are never mentioned.

No Apology has a bad case of a common problem with politicians’ books, written with aides, analysts, and consultants: whose words are you reading in any given point? To judge from the acknowledgements, Romney had a lot of help writing this book.

Some of it seems symbolic of his ongoing process of joining the far right. For example, Romney doesn’t talk a lot about the Democrats, preferring to focus outrage more narrowly on Obama. But there are references to Democrats, and to the Democratic Party, Democratic voters, a Democratic health-care reform program, and of course, Democratic mistakes. Then suddenly at the end of a chapter (page 167) we find “Democrat” being used as an adjective – “not a Democrat problem”. A few pages later, back to “Democratic.” Now, for some odd reason, using “Democrat” instead of “Democratic” as an adjective is favored sneer of today’s right wing. (Why misusing grammar should be a point of pride is unclear.)

So I suspect we’re reading someone else’s work there, someone else’s paragraphs tacked on.

Romney has a long impassioned passage about the high rate of out-of-wedlock births, and the harm this causes in many children’s lives. It seems heartfelt, and I am inclined to think that he really cares about this – but suddenly, at the end of the passage, it says “given the enormous human and national implications of nearly half our children being raised without the benefit of two parents, it is long past time to tell the truth: a marriage between one man and one woman is one of the best things a parent can do for a child.” (Italics in original.)

What? We were talking about children being born out of wedlock and suddenly he’s shouting about same-sex marriage? I bet he had help with that jump.

There’s lots of stuff in the book that we can’t tell who wrote. I do believe it was Romney writing about his idea for a skinny tandem car (one person in front, one in back, like a motorcycle) and the skinny highway lanes they could use. And I not only believe he wrote the line about the surge in productivity that awaits the manufacturer “who simplifies television remotes!” but I heartily support it.

He probably wrote the silly passage about national anthems because it’s too odd to be in there if it weren’t His Own Work. He says that he’s confirmed, by observing Olympic athletes, that Americans are the only people who put their hands over their hearts during their national anthem.

Okay. Could be. He then says, “I believe that we instinctively place our hands over our hearts in memory of those who shed their blood for America.” Oh brother. “Instinctively”? As in innate, inborn? No, Mitt, no. “Traditionally” is the word he should use, but who knows, maybe he really means “instinctively.” Because of course the soldiers of other nations don’t shed their blood for their countries, just green slime.

Maybe other national anthems don’t reference blood, battle and sacrifice. Maybe the Marseillaise is a love song, and “May a tainted blood drench our furrows” refers to oh, let’s see, autumn leaves. Because we are so special.

This brings us back to apology. Perhaps this stupid stuff about never apologizing isn’t intrinsic to Romney’s world view. Someone else apparently came up with the whole phony grandstanding idea. In the acknowledgements, Romney thanks Kelli Harrison, “who has worked with me and with my PAC since its inception,” for suggesting the title after he had spent at least six months trying.

That sums No Apologies up neatly – Romney voicing someone else’s dumb ideas. For which I wish he’d apologize.