Ann
Romney was good, really good. Articulate, attractive and fiery, she hit her
lines like a polished stump speaker even though she’d claimed never to have
done anything like that before. Certainly she came off better than Chris
Christie, who through all his hazy bombast seemed to be touting himself for
president in 2016. Or perhaps Christie was just making a pitch for Mitt Romney
as President of New Jersey in 2012. Either way, that wasn’t supposed to
be the point—and it wasn’t what needed to be said.
Indeed,
the larger problem with the big kickoff speeches at the GOP convention is that
they just haven’t achieved critical mass. While the economy is bad, it’s not
terrible; while Barack Obama is disappointing, he’s not hated (at least not as
much as the GOP base would like); and while Mitt Romney is impressive, he’s not
inspirational. As much as Republicans desperately want it to be, this is simply
not 1980, an era when not only unemployment was high but inflation was at 13.5
percent, when “Jimmy Cardigan” Carter had lost the faith of the country by
whining about “malaise” and stumbling over the Iran hostage crisis, and when an
always eloquent Ronald Reagan captured the mood decisively by asking, “Are you
better off now than you were four years ago?”
By
contrast, at such an ambiguous historical moment as today, it doesn’t seem
likely that Romney—or any candidate so tepid—could merely float into the White
House on the pleasant cloud of policy generalities we’ve heard so far. What’s
being said at the podium in Tampa may be enough for the base—they all speak in
code to each other – but it hardly seems enough to persuade the dwindling but
critical undecideds to switch presidential horses in mid-recovery. And though
his campaign has clearly placed its emphasis on galvanizing Republicans over
collecting sparse independents (thus his failure to move more clearly to the
center), make no mistake: Romney will need votes outside the GOP to squeak by
Obama.
It’s
misleading to suggest, as Newt Gingrich did on one of the talk shows yesterday,
that Reagan and Carter were neck and neck at this point, just as Obama and
Romney are today. As Nate
Silver has pointed out, the 1980 election featured “incredibly volatile”
polling that is quite unlike the prolonged deadlock we have today between a
somewhat disappointing president and a relentlessly charmless challenger. “By the summer, Mr. Reagan had a clear
lead, peaking around 25 points in polls conducted immediately after the
Republican convention in Detroit. Then, Mr. Carter rebounded, with polls
conducted in late October showing him behind Mr. Reagan by only a point or two
on average,” Silver wrote.
“Tonight, we are going to choose respect
over love,” Christie told the crowd last night, echoing what seems to have
become the Romney line that he doesn’t need people to love him, only respect
him. “We are taking our country back… You see, we are the United States of America.”
Huh? We kind of know that already. It was difficult to grasp any
message through all the verbal gauze, but boiled down, the obviously well-fed
Christie seemed to be telling senior Americans they need to be ready to starve
to save their grandchildrens’ bank accounts, teachers that they need to be
ready to be unemployed (“They believe in
teachers' unions . We believe in teachers.” Uh, don’t teachers
belong to teachers’ unions?), and the very rich that they should get ready to
invest those tax-cut windfalls.
It just wasn’t enough. Nor was Ann Romney’s gentle encomium to the man “who makes me laugh,” and with whom she has “a real marriage” rather than a storybook one. Because neither she nor anyone else in Tampa has yet done a good job of persuading undecided American voters that it’s time to divorce Obama and marry themselves to Mitt.
It just wasn’t enough. Nor was Ann Romney’s gentle encomium to the man “who makes me laugh,” and with whom she has “a real marriage” rather than a storybook one. Because neither she nor anyone else in Tampa has yet done a good job of persuading undecided American voters that it’s time to divorce Obama and marry themselves to Mitt.
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