There is no getting around it: Mitt Romney is a terrible candidate. Barring some sort of seismic change of events, Barack Obama will be reelected president. In spite of an economy still in the tank and a very angry, very mobilized subsection of the country that deeply despises him.
Why? One simply needs to look at the two men and ask a question that has become a tired political cliché, “Who would you rather have a beer with?” Obama is personable, likeable and — despite a more than unsettling proportion of Americans who think he’s the anti-Christ — he remains personally popular.
For one thing, Obama actually does sit down and have a beer with folks, while Romney drinks chocolate milk, belongs to a still distrusted religion, is wooden, awkward, and about as loveable as Clint Eastwood’s empty chair. Republican partisans counter by saying that Obama may be more likeable, but Romney is better for the job. What strikes me is that just eight years ago we were listening to the exact opposite argument; George W. Bush the confident, strutting Texan against John Kerry, a billionaire elitist. Oh, how the tables have turned.
Back in 2004, Democrats railed against Bush’s “everyman” persona, calling it a mask for his upbringing as a Connecticut-born millionaire, the grandson of a senator and the son of a president. But, as both sides know very well, presidential politics are about image and in just two election cycles, the image has been turned around. Can Obama be both a regular, suds-sipping, NFL-watching, burger-eating American, and a Harvard educated constitutional law professor? Don’t bet against it.
Unfortunately for Romney he cannot escape his image as an out of touch rich guy, who just cannot empathize with the common man. His friendship with Nascar team owners, his joy of firing people, and the newly released footage of him describing 47 per cent of all Americans as entitlement-dependent tax scofflaws haven’t won him any friends. The former Massachusetts governor already had a serious problem appealing to the bulk of the electorate. Now that he has admitted that he is not even trying to win them over, we have learned the fundamental reason why Romney is so disconnected from the average American. Mitt Romney clearly doesn’t get it. Clinton got it. Bush got it to some extent. Al Gore and John Kerry didn’t, but clearly Obama does.
It’s hard to know what ‘it’ is, but American voters know it when they see it. And that’s why Obama is going to get reelected and the Republican Party is going to have some real soul searching to do.
