I’ve been reading and thinking a lot the last week about Mitt Romney’s campaign.<\/p>\n
I rewatched his stiff, wooden appearance doing David Letterman’s Top 10 list, and his indignant turn with Fox News’s Brett Baier.<\/p>\n
And I waded through piles of Youtube clips from the debates, which were more confident, more convincing, more presidential.<\/p>\n
Taken together, I think there are signs that this is a candidate who doesn’t yet have the chops to close the deal.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Yes, you have to have ideas and policies and convictions, but you also have to do that intangible E.M. Forster thing:\u00a0 connect<\/em>.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n And it’s not just about his waffly stances on abortion, or the individual insurance mandate.<\/p>\n Plenty of candidates over the years have been out of sync with their party on major issues, and still managed to pull people in.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Mitt Romney hasn’t managed that feat.<\/p>\n And here’s the thing:\u00a0 he’s failed to close the deal even when matched against what most conservative pundits describe as a weak field.<\/p>\n It’s not like he’s up against Ronald Reagan here.<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n This is the “Anybody But Obama” notion and it is pure silliness.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 And Obama’s poll numbers are rising.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n In many ways, he’ll have to make an even more complicated argument than the one he’s trying to make now.<\/p>\n It will have to be nuanced, both positive in tone and negative in tone, fiery and reassuring.\u00a0 So far, Romney just hasn’t shown that can’t of let’s-sign-on-the-bottom-line charisma.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n He may also find a red-hot vice presidential candidate who helps to fill in some of the blanks in his own political persona.<\/p>\n But the clock is ticking.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Past presidential candidates have survived protracted, bloody primaries, and bounced back strong in the general election.<\/p>\n But so far Mitt Romney doesn’t look like that kind of campaigner, and 2012 doesn’t look like that kind of year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been reading and thinking a lot the last week about Mitt Romney’s campaign. 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