An Audition for Schiffren

Mitt Romney has a bigger problem than his exploits, in his role as Robber Baron, as ruthless exploiter of the people. It’s one that we’re likely to hear more about steadily during the campaign. It’s described by many labels... inauthenticity, stiffness, distance from the average guy.

Michael Leahy describes the affliction as “failure to connect’:

...concerns about his ability to connect are casually noted by Republican insiders, even among some who once worked for him.

“This is Romney: He knows what is wrong with a car engine, and he knows how to rebuild that engine — but he doesn’t acknowledge the person driving the car,” said Doug Gross, who served as the Romney campaign’s Iowa state chairman in 2008 but is uncommitted in the 2012 race....“He’s not able to warm a room immediately or make an audience feel like he is speaking to them,” Gross said. “You’d have to put a new card in him for that to happen.”

Leahy names Tom Dewey and Michael Dukakis as two whose presidential campaigns have foundered on this not-quite-humanness. (I’m surprised that the story of Dewey’s furious outburst against a careless train engineer didn’t make the story. ) I would have thought that Al Gore definitely makes this list, and John Kerry deserves at least an honourable mention.
It would be a mistake to try to be someone other than he is, to affect a ‘jes-folks’ demeanour and empathetic mien. As Dukakis’s press secretary says,

“You can talk all you want about changing a candidate, but eventually the candidate will go back to his default position — he is who he is,” said Duncan, who along the way with Dukakis learned the most humbling truth of all, one that Romney likely has already discovered. “The attention of a presidential campaign is so glaring, so unrelenting for a candidate. Those parts of you that make you who you are eventually get exposed.”

Lisa Schiffren thinks that conservatives could do better, but is trying to accept the reality of Romney:

he is very handsome, and has such a good work ethic for a rich guy who really does not have a clue what it means to have to make the choices that normal middle-class people always have to make — which is why we don’t really trust him. Have you ever noticed how the very rich have so much more sympathy for the non-working poor than for the boring old middle class? ...Especially if he picks the right advisers. But why can’t he hire a conservative speechwriter, who knows the words and the music?

Right on point. Mitt can’t stifle himself from blurting out that he likes to be able to fire people, or that other candidates are attacking him over Bain Capital out of envy. But he can hire speechwriters who can try to evoke that sense of hope and confidence that successful candidates evoke. And hey -- Lisa Schiffren’s a speechwriter isn’t she? Maybe she has better things to do, but isn’t that the good thing about being Richie Rich, that you can keep piling stacks of money on the table until you can get people to do what you want? If Lisa won’t do the writing, she should sure be picking and supervising the people who do.

Keep a watch on who Romney’s speechwriters this campaign. It’ll tell us a lot.