Mitt Romney is Kinda Cool Sometimes, Spike Lee Says

Presumptive GOP candidate Mitt Romney is believed to — not to sugarcoat it — be the rich, white dude’s candidate.

And the impending end of the long race between Mitt Romney and Democrat incumbent Barack Obama is expected to be a bit… well, the word ugly is bandied about a lot in the lead up to the home stretch.

Which, in fact, is exactly what filmmaker Spike Lee predicted in a recent interview that touched on politics, President Obama, Mitt Romney and the climate of race in the US right now. Of the upcoming election, Lee forecasts a rough road for President Obama as he battles to hold his seat as Commander-in-Chief:

“Bottom line, there are many people in America who look at themselves and say, ‘Am I better now than I was before?’ It is going to be tooth and nail, and I think it is going to get nasty.”

And indeed, it’s gotten a bit nasty for Obama already, with GOP attacks on everything from the dog-eating incident to basically coded racism, like when Newt Gingrich called Obama “the food stamp president.”

But while Spike Lee is a dyed in the wool Obama fan, he relayed a nice anecdote about Mitt Romney in the New York magazine interview, where he dishes that he met Mittens in an airport once. Lee explains:

“You know what’s funny? I met [Romney] in an airport, Reagan National Airport, and we said hello. It was, like, two, three years ago. I was just in D.C. and he was there and he said, ‘What’s up, Spike?’ and I said, ‘What’s happening, Mitt?’ We were in line getting something to eat. So I said what’s up and shook hands. I think it is going to be very, very, very close.”

Lee also said that many people felt that Obama’s election signalled an end to racial tensions in the US, but that such thinking was “naive.”