Can Mitt Romney be a closer?
I’ve been reading and thinking a lot the last week about Mitt Romney’s campaign.
I rewatched his stiff, wooden appearance doing David Letterman’s Top 10 list, and his indignant turn with Fox News’s Brett Baier.
And I waded through piles of Youtube clips from the debates, which were more confident, more convincing, more presidential.
Taken together, I think there are signs that this is a candidate who doesn’t yet have the chops to close the deal.
I know a lot of In Box readers are grumpy about horse-racey essays, but the truth is that in a campaign the ability of the candidates to sell themselves on the stump is part of the equation.
Yes, you have to have ideas and policies and convictions, but you also have to do that intangible E.M. Forster thing: connect.
Despite years of trial runs and practice and enviable discipline — and more than a year as GOP frontrunner — the former Massachusetts governor still only wins 25% of his own party’s support.
And it’s not just about his waffly stances on abortion, or the individual insurance mandate.
Plenty of candidates over the years have been out of sync with their party on major issues, and still managed to pull people in.
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both campaigned on platforms that were considerably more conservative than the Democratic base, but they still managed to convince primary voters that they embodied something bigger, something more compelling than individual policies.
Mitt Romney hasn’t managed that feat.
And here’s the thing: he’s failed to close the deal even when matched against what most conservative pundits describe as a weak field.
It’s not like he’s up against Ronald Reagan here.
If Romney can’t get it done against Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum — opponents who lack money, resources, and, in many cases, functional campaigns — how can he expect to go head to head with Obama?
The theory in Republican circles is that once Romney secures the nomination, a fierce anti-Democrat backlash will unify GOP voters and pull a plurality of American voters into his column.
This is the “Anybody But Obama” notion and it is pure silliness.
Politics-watchers widely expect this president to arrive at the starting line fresh and unscathed by a primary challenge — with something like a $1 billion political warchest. And Obama’s poll numbers are rising.
And it’s anything but certain that conservative voters will unify behind Romney’s campaign with the zeal that will be needed to topple a sitting president.
If he’s the nominee, the simple fact is that Romney will be the underdog from the start, scrambling for cash, trying to herd an incredibly fragmented party and searching for the right narrative that will convince the nation that we need a big change at the top right now.
In many ways, he’ll have to make an even more complicated argument than the one he’s trying to make now.
It will have to be nuanced, both positive in tone and negative in tone, fiery and reassuring. So far, Romney just hasn’t shown that can’t of let’s-sign-on-the-bottom-line charisma.
It’s possible, of course, that the primary contest will help him get there, reminding him that to win in 2012 the Republican candidate will have to take risks, show passion, and elevate his game.
He may also find a red-hot vice presidential candidate who helps to fill in some of the blanks in his own political persona.
But the clock is ticking. To have a real shot, Romney needs to win by confident margins in the early primaries, in Iowa and New Hampshire, then move quickly to lock down the “inevitability” factor.
Past presidential candidates have survived protracted, bloody primaries, and bounced back strong in the general election.
But so far Mitt Romney doesn’t look like that kind of campaigner, and 2012 doesn’t look like that kind of year.
Tags: analysis, election12, politics
The thought of Mitt doesn’t inspire me.
He’s the slow and steady candidate in the tortoise and hare race. I guess (and what they say) is – he is also the “economy candidate” for the independents. The guy who can move back to the center etc. But… does his Bain Capital experience make him arguably the president to turn around the economy?
“Past presidential candidates have survived protracted, bloody primaries, and bounced back strong in the general election.”
When?
I can only remember candidates being weakened by this kind of primary.
Hilary never went all out on Obama and the GOP has fallen in line behind a candidate quickly (in my memory).
Romney got a little bruised and dropped like a stone in polls.
I like (former RNC Chair) Michael Steele’s recent comment on Romney:
“The brother just can’t bake the cake.”
In my gut, I have a feeling the GOP this year will experience something like what the Dems got in ’04 with Sen. Kerry – basically a sacrificial lamb. The Republicans, I think, are hedging bets – that while the President’s not as strong as he was, he hasn’t really been running hard yet, and if the economy starts or continues its climb out of the pits, then the ’12 GOP candidate’s going to become somewhat of a footnote in history. The party’s big guns (if the party can keep from splitting apart) are waiting for an open field in ’16, also hoping that the Democratic Party will field its own version of the clown-car we’ve been watching as it drives around the rings in Iowa, New Hampshire etc. The main difference I see is that right now there’s not a Democratic version of the Tea Party pushing candidates to the fringes of reality.
Peter –
I think your 2004 analogy shows just how wide open this contest could be. John Kerry, remember, was one big state (or a couple of small states) away from victory.
And 11 states were decided by margins of 5% or less. (Four states were decided by less than 2% margins…)
If Mitt Romney can get into the game and push his message to a Kerry-like level of viability, then I think this could get very interesting.
–Brian, NCPR
Can he close the Charisma gap though? I think you said he was wooden and that seems pretty accurate to me. Are people drawn to him, does he inspire people? From my perspective the answer is no regardless of his policy stands.
He (Romney) is going to have to face the “no core values” charge.
Sidenote: The Obama “billion dollar warchest” is baloney. His fundraising is going well but not that well.
The problem is not really Rommey, though I personally despise him. The problem is that the Republican Party is full of rank and people who themselves could qualify as Clown Car candidates, and will only vote for such. The fact that so many still deny, or at least question, Obama’s citizenship is the biggest giveaway, but their anti-science beliefs (the Earth is new, evolution a hoax, ditto human-caused global climate change) indicate that many Republicans reject rational answers to perplexing problems, as well as any compromise that might get us there.
Romney is pretty lame as a candidate, but in other years he could push his success as a practical problem solver, from making billions for Bain Capital through the Salt Lake City Olympics, and even bringing the Republican-originated Mass health plan to Mass. (well maybe not that one). But a practical, compromising, problem solver is not, and never will be acceptable to the good Republican folks of Iowa, and other places.
Good on ’em, I (disgusted as I am with President “I will never prosecute a corporate fraudster” Obama) say. Those fine ideological, reality denying, conservatives will guarantee us the lesser of two evils, sigh.
When I stack my firewood I make two piles. One on the left is Al Gore, one on the right is Mitt Romney.
Brian, I suggest you refrain from horse race blogs unless and until Romney faces a serious challenge. “Serious challenge” meaning more than just a second or third place in a multiple-candidate race in a rural state with less than 20 electoral votes.
Iowa is important for fund raising so from a horse race perspective it matters. From an electoral perspective it is not relevant. I don’t think you can totally blow Iowa off but on the other hand the actual first place winner of Iowa is not relevant. Paul may win Iowa and from my perspective would be great as it would force some of these foreign entanglement/constitutional issues and it would be more interesting than anyone else they have running. But he is not a viable national candidate, he is a fun Ralph Nader candidate.
But for example Iowa may finish off Perry.
Mitt Romney is the quintesential candidate for president. He has been a proven politician a proven businessman as 300 million dollars can attest to.
And of course, a strong family man and Mormon.it just does not get any better.
There is some kind of mystic abOUT Obama, relates on most any level with the populace, but is completely out of his element with compromising with congress. He bullies them along and takes his case to the people when he should be taking it to the peoples elected represenatives, congressmen.
Ah, Howard, so you figure Obama could have tried harder with the Republicans in Congress? How, exactly?
And Mitt’s $300 million– you know that he made it largely in leveraged buyouts, profiting on buying floundering corporations cheap, stripping away any assets that aren’t profitable and laying off excess workers. Not the most creative of endeavors.
Not that running a company has anything at all to do with being president of the U.S.
remember the “vision thing?” Mitt doesn’t have it. He is probably a very good administrator – somebody you’d love to be running your company as the executive officer. But we have no idea what he believes in. (other than he wants to be president).
This morning I heard Romney (who I personally think sounds like the smarmiest of motivational speakers and hucksters) holding forth with an anti-Obama rant during a speech in Iowa… He was running on about how the President is (gasp!) vacationing in warm, sunny Hawaii while, by his implication, all the good Americans are trudging about in the colder climates. He spoke with such smugness, it was clear he amused himself greatly.
The GOP’s going to have to work harder if they’re going to land any solid body blows on the incumbent.
Barack Obama will be our next president. Despite all the Rancid Republican rhetoric, he has done as good a job as the congress would allow, and as good a job as any other candidate could have done in this war-ruined economy.
My biggest worry right now is how to go about getting into another stupidness in Iran.
toot: While I respect your opinion the polls seems to suggest otherwise. “For the time, the poll found that a majority of adults, 53 percent, said Obama should be voted out of office while 43 percent said he deserves a second term.” I see the bigger question as, “Can Obama convince the public that he is deserving of another term in office”. I honestly think he has a huge uphill battle. Are people better off now than when he took office? Did he follow through the his slogans of “Promise and Change”? I don’t see where Mitt has a problem it’s Obama who has a problem.
Gary, you need to read further down the page:
“Despite the soft level of support, many are uncertain whether a Republican president would be a better choice. Asked whom they would support next November, 47 percent of adults favored Obama compared with 46 percent for Romney, a former Massachusetts governor. Against Gingrich, the president holds a solid advantage, receiving 51 percent compared with 42 percent for the former House speaker.”
http://ap-gfkpoll.com/featured/president-obama-and-the-economy
It’s still a long time till the election…
We need to run this country like a business and Mitt has experience with business.
In order to make his business more profitable Mitt fired tens of thousands of people.
So how do you get this country back on track? Easy, just fire ten or twenty million Americans. Send ’em back to where they came from.
Then he can work on the health care problem.
The best account I have yet seen explaining exactly why we don’t need to run this country like a business or like a family is Krugman’s latest:
“First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base. The debt from World War II was never repaid; it just became increasingly irrelevant as the U.S. economy grew, and with it the income subject to taxation.
“Second — and this is the point almost nobody seems to get — an over-borrowed family owes money to someone else; U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves.
“This was clearly true of the debt incurred to win World War II. Taxpayers were on the hook for a debt that was significantly bigger, as a percentage of G.D.P., than debt today; but that debt was also owned by taxpayers, such as all the people who bought savings bonds. So the debt didn’t make postwar America poorer. In particular, the debt didn’t prevent the postwar generation from experiencing the biggest rise in incomes and living standards in our nation’s history.
“But isn’t this time different? Not as much as you think.
“It’s true that foreigners now hold large claims on the United States, including a fair amount of government debt. But every dollar’s worth of foreign claims on America is matched by 89 cents’ worth of U.S. claims on foreigners. And because foreigners tend to put their U.S. investments into safe, low-yield assets, America actually earns more from its assets abroad than it pays to foreign investors. If your image is of a nation that’s already deep in hock to the Chinese, you’ve been misinformed. Nor are we heading rapidly in that direction.”
More at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/opinion/krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html
My biggest issue with Romney is he’s stated that he wants to spend MORE money on defense. But then again, he made this statement while giving a speech at the Citadel. And we all know Romney has a propensity to tell whatever crowd whatever that particular crowd wants to hear.
I would agree with Clapton. My biggest problem with Romney is not his domestic plans; but his defense and war plans. I don’t think he gets it, we don’t want anymore of this world police crap, it is the reason that even though he is kind of crazy, Ron Paul is doing so well.
It is one thing to have a strong defense and quite another to say that we are comfortable with 5-10 and possibly 20 year ongoing occupations and conflicts against those we are occupying.