The New York Times checks in on the Mitt Romney campaign and finds things are going, well, great - except that Romney, "polished and upbeat," is having trouble connecting with voters on a personal level.
The Times looks at something I noticed about Romney when I saw him at a small meet-and-greet at the home of a newly elected state senator near Nashville a few months ago. He's got his presentation down pat, and its the presentation of a perpetually positive pitchman, as if he's trying - just a little too hard - the evoke Ronald Reagan's sunny spirit.
The NYT's Mark Leibovich writes...
Mitt Romney loves the word “great.” As in, "Have a great day,” “Things are going great,” “I’m feeling great.” Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, also looks great, sounds great and smells great, like shaving cream. Everyone who asks him something gets a “Thanks, great question.”
By any measure, Mr. Romney, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, is a master pitchman and presenter, bred in politics (his father, George, was the governor of Michigan), enriched in business and battle-tested in the Republican pariah colony of Massachusetts. He is relentlessly upbeat (“I’m feeling incredibly optimistic about our future,” he says at campaign events.) His polished “presidential bearing” has been marveled upon, a package of great hair, sleek suits and dreamy smiles well matched to podiums and magazine covers.
But can he connect with voters? While he is climbing in the polls, some people who have seen him close up at recent events describe him as impressive but somewhat detached. He struggles at times to convey a sense that he is an accessible mortal — that he can be spontaneous, that he bears scars and can appreciate at gut-level the struggles of ordinary Americans.
“He doesn’t really seem to be like the rest of us,” said Denis Joyal, a machinist from Belmont, N. H., who heard Mr. Romney at an American Legion hall in Alton, N.H. He called the candidate “sort of high-class” and “a little too perfect.”
Mr. Romney, a 60-year-old Harvard law and business school graduate, former venture capitalist worth nearly $350 million and clean-living teetotaler with a weakness for Vanilla Coke, is operating in a political environment in which candidates are expected to prove they are “regular” people, fit to be neighbors as well as presidents. It is not enough for a candidate to have command of issues, or a stage, or a camera — he must give voters a sense of everyday kinship.
This is something of a challenge for Mr. Romney, derided in some unfriendly circles as “Governor Perfect,” a term he chuckles at and flatly rejects. “That’s not something that people who know me well would suggest is the right handle,” he said in an interview. “I have plenty of weaknesses, plenty of failings.”
Tom Rath, a former New Hampshire attorney general who is serving as a senior adviser to Romney’s campaign, calls it "a problem we won’t be able to overcome."
The NYT makes this interesting observation about Romney's campaign: It "somewhat resembles the 'roadshow' that precedes an initial public stock offering."
Romney is aiming for an IPO at the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.
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