IN MY PREVIOUS life as a blogger, I was a prominent supporter/shill for Mitt Romney. Having officially morphed into a journalist this week, I hoped to get my hands on the elixir that gives New York Times reporters the Olympian detachment that so distinguishes them. Alas, I woke up today much the same as I went to bed last Friday--an unrepentant Mitt Romney supporter.
Frankly, this hasn't been the best of times for Romney fans. It seems like the Romney campaign chooses a different theme for each 7-10 day cycle. Over the past several weeks some decided lemons have blemished the batch. Romney's vow to move "In God We Trust" from the rear of our coins to the front was a dreadful piece of cornpone pandering. His boast over the weekend that he represented the "Republican wing of the Republican party" was even worse. Who at Romney headquarters thought it was a good idea to echo Howard Dean's rhetoric? Someone please tell me that person's not still pulling a paycheck from Romney '08.
At lunch a couple of weeks ago, a voracious follower of politics challenged me in regards to Romney, "How come people don't like him?" The question's premise isn't quite accurate--where Romney has most actively engaged the electorate in places like Iowa, New Hampshire, and even South Carolina, he has made great progress in the polls. But the question does get to the heart of something. For some reason, Romney provokes a lot of hostility from a lot of people.
It may
be because he looks like a politician straight from central casting. Good-looking and fast-talking, Romney appears and acts the way one imagines a politician would. After eight years of seeing George W. Bush wrestle with the English language (and usually lose via submission), you'd think conservatives especially would welcome the thought of a standard bearer who can express himself clearly and without undue effort. Alas, politicians remain one of our most reviled life-forms. The fact that Romney strikes people as a politician to the core doesn't work to his benefit.
Anyway, I'm not the ideal guy to answer why some people don't like Romney. After all, I like him. But I will venture an additional guess--I think it has something to do with the fact that Mitt-haters sense his wheels are always spinning. They think he cynically calculates every statement for maximum political advantage.
Even if the narrative of Romney as an opportunistic flip-flopper hadn't achieved some traction last winter, this would have been a problem for him. His brain truly doesn't have an off switch. He is always thinking, always calculating. He has a restless mind that surrounds and smothers every issue and every problem. In truth, his combination of electric intelligence and relentless intellectual curiosity is his greatest strength.
By this point in the campaign, the candidates have heard every question they're going to get about 100 times and most have developed robotic answers to all of them. Not Romney. His wheels are still spinning. That's why he does so much vamping on the stage, sometimes to solid effect and sometimes disastrously, as when he compared his sons' service on his campaign to our soldiers' service in the military.
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