Mitt Romney's speech to the Republican National Convention: panel verdict
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Version 0 of 1. Ana Marie Cox: 'He has to pretend to be normal and it never works' Whatever the Romney campaign was thinking when it organized tonight's agenda, it was probably not, "We may run the risk of losing the news cycle to a chair." To judge by Romney's speech, the general thought process went something like, "Have him talk about having grown up in a human family" – the created-in-a-lab rumors are a problem – "and then make him seem not-crazy and not-Obama and promise a secret plan to give everyone jobs." I think the speech hit all those marks, but the problems can be summed up by the fact that its greatest applause line was the pregnant hush Mitt dropped after referencing Obama's promise to "raise the oceans". That pause really killed – too bad you can't put it on a bumper sticker. And that's the problem the Republican party faces writ small (very): they have no affirmative argument, no positive vision. To Obama's cajoling rhetoric, the best they can offer is only a smirking silence. They don't have a script, which brings us to Clint Eastwood. It was another synecdoche for how the GOP has lost its message. They are out-of-touch and winging it, groping for applause lines and settling for cliches. Who would have thought that asking Trump to speak would end up looking like playing it safe? Eastwood's performance was one part painful and two parts befuddling, rescued from a cringe-inducing memory only by the almost-immediate emergence of "#eastwooding" on Twitter. People scolding chairs is the new people shaming dogs. Obama even got in on the action, tweeting a faintly unbecoming but pleasantly cheeky photo of himself ensconced in a very-official-looking chair. "This seat's taken," it read. Well, for the moment. Romney's speech previewed a line of argument that – if the Republicans can hew to it – is their best shot at wooing swing voters: Obama's not a bad guy, he's in over his head! Give <em>this guy</em> a shot. It's an honest message, at least, if not a very powerful one. There is something small about it, too, and that smallness somehow permeated Romney's address, right down to his disingenuous characterization of Bain Capital as a "small company" that "helped" other businesses. (With apologies to Ronald Reagan, the nine most terrifying words in the English language are "I'm from Bain Capital and I'm here to help.") That's the thing about Romney: he is so rich, his experience so alien to everyday Americans, he has to pretend to be normal and it never works. Though it's all relative; maybe having the old guy talk to a chair wasn't such a bad way to go, after all. The real loser of the night was probably Senator Marco Rubio, who gave a flawless delivery of another personal narrative that does Romney no good by comparison. He is smart, somewhat reasonable (he has kept the Tea Party at arm's distance despite their desire to embrace him), and his very existence proves that the Republican party is not hostage to its nativist fringe. But between Eastwood and Romney, he was just a short interlude of sanity. All things considered with this convention's last night, it might be just as well everyone forgets he was there. <em>Ana Marie Cox is US political columnist for the Guardian</em> Jim Geraghty: 'Few expected they would hear something so heartfelt' For long stretches, it looked like Clint Eastwood was going to be the one unmitigated disaster of the convention. His surprise appearance, rumored all week, was somewhat hard to explain just by itself: Romney had rarely sought out help from the relatively rare Hollywood Republicans, and although Eastwood had periodically discussed his Republican preferences, he had never done anything as high-profile as address a national convention before. Eastwood's "Halftime in America" ad for Chrysler during the Super Bowl was interpreted by many as a subtle argument in favor of President Obama, so perhaps Eastwood wanted to set the record straight or do penance. Instead, he rambled, scratched his head, spoke away from the microphone, and creeped up to the edge of disaster – before pulling back with one good line after another: "the stupid idea of trying terrorists in downtown New York City"; "Politicians are employees of ours; and then, the gravelly "When somebody does not do the job, you've got to let them go." If the GOP convention aimed to persuade waivering Obama voters that it's OK to vote for Romney this time, the old tough guy might have. Marco Rubio is consistently a great speaker, with a remarkable personal story, and so those who have seen him speak before may think it was par for the course for him. But those who haven't seen him before are probably asking this morning, "Who's that guy? He's good! He gets what this country is about!" And then, there was the nominee himself. For months – years, really – his fans have told us that Romney is quite personable, warm, and charming when the cameras are turned off and he's far from the crowds of campaign world. At most, Warm Humanized Mitt has been like Bigfoot: occasional glimpses here and there, secondhand accounts, little or no concrete evidence. Until last night. Suddenly, Thursday night, he's discussing his upbringing, and he mentions: "My mom and dad were married for 64 years. And if you wondered what their secret was, you could have asked the local florist. [Applause] Because every day, dad gave mom a Rose, which he put on the bedside table. That is how she found that the day my father died. She went looking for him because, that morning, there was no rose." Romney choked up a bit telling that story, and there were lumps in the throat of everyone watching. We've never seen anything remotely like that from Mitt Romney. Most Americans have never seen Mitt Romney speak anything so personal or heartfelt. It was like a different man. The policy sections were fine, but we know the best convention addresses are rarely about policy proposals; they're about sharing a vision and values. Everyone expected Romney would give a solid speech. But few, if any, expected they would hear something so heartfelt. It will be fascinating to see the reaction in the coming days and weeks. <em>Jim Geraghty is a contributing editor to the National Review</em> Michael Cohen: 'There just wasn't much there, there' If there was one area of apparent consensus among the journalists assembled in Tampa for the Republican National Convention, it was that Mitt Romney's acceptance speech was the single most important moment of the proceedings. With unfavorable ratings above 50%, and little sense among voters about what a Romney presidency would portend, his remarks on Thursday night were the best opportunity for Romney to change the narrative of the presidential campaign and cast his candidacy in a new and more positive light. That didn't happen. It's not that Romney gave a bad speech; it's that it was a remarkably unmemorable one. It offered more platitudes and bromides rather than lift or vision. Part of the problem is that Romney is not a good public speaker. He gives off an air of smarminess when he speaks and, like another "robotic" politician from 12 years ago, exudes the aroma of insincerity. Of course, it doesn't help when he has such unmemorable material from which to work. In fact, it's likely that by the time you are reading this, the one thing everyone will be talking about from Thursday night was Clint Eastwood's bizarre and rambling interlude, with an empty chair serving as a stand-in for Barack Obama. Considering how unpopular Romney is, it was imperative for his acceptance speech to offer a more intimate or absorbing view of him, not as a politician, but as a person. The first two-thirds of the speech sought to do just that, with some middling success. There was, for example, a charming story about the love shared between his parents, George and Lenore. Oddly, however, Romney's only tenure in public service – as governor of Massachusetts – went virtually unmentioned. Instead, it was all about his family life, his time at Bain Capital and, interestingly, his faith. But Romney's speechwriters, who were in rather poor form throughout the convention, forget the essential speechwriting trick of showing rather than the telling. They did the opposite, which made the "humanizing" section of the speech far less than it could have been. Then again, it might just be that Mitt Romney doesn't have a very interesting personal story, because very little of what he said on Thursday was terribly compelling. So, maybe it's not all the speechwriters' fault. But that section was Gettysburg-esque in comparison to the rest of Romney's remarks. For a guy running against his opponent's economic performance, one would imagine that Romney would take some time to talk his policy agenda for fixing the economy and creating jobs. But one would be wrong. Romney's economic plan, which revolved around an underwhelming set of policy ideas that would do little to spur job creation (trade agreements, school choice, cutting the deficit, boosting small business and energy independence) was remarkably threadbare. There wasn't one single idea for spurring the economy, a la Ronald Reagan's call for a massive tax cut in his 1980 acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. I counted around 250 words. Foreign policy was even worse: 200 or so words of false attacks against Obama and virtually nothing on what would be the guiding foreign policy principles of a Romney administration. There just wasn't much there, there. In the end, Romney appears to be more interested in critiquing Obama than he is offering voters a sense of where he wants to take the country. In the process he has opened the door for Obama, at his convention next week, to fill the policy vacuum left by Romney's hollow set of remarks. While not necessarily a disaster, it's hard to escape the notion that Romney's speech, like so much of his campaign, was simply a missed opportunity. <em>Michael Cohen is a US political columnist for the Observer and Guardian</em> James Antle: 'Humanizing Romney was the central task' The overarching theme of the Republican National Convention tonight: I am a Mitt, not a machine. Humanizing Romney was the central task of the Tampa gathering. So, Thursday, we heard from people who have benefited from Romney's acts of private charity. People whose lives have been touched by his friendship and generosity. This was followed by testimonials from people involved in his successful business ventures, like Staples and Bain, reminding the audience that the former CEO didn't just lay people off. He hired people and created jobs, too. Then Romney himself gave a speech that was focused more on himself than on policy or political issues. He talked movingly about his parents. His wife. His early career. His respect for women and the fact that Ann Romney held a more important job than he did. It was a bit transparent at times that Romney was striving to close the gender gap, or reassure the voter who wants to vote against Barack Obama but isn't quite sure about the Republican nominee. But then, so what if it was transparent? Those were the things Romney needed to do. A majority of the country on some level agrees with Romney's basic critique of Obama: that the economic recovery is too weak, that the jobs are too few, that the president has over-promised and under-delivered. There are voters who were excited about an Obama presidency who now think the orator was greater than the executive. What many of these voters aren't sure about, however, is whether Romney will make things better. They don't know if he is in touch their problems or interests. Obama is the president who hasn't improved their economic condition; Romney is the businessman who fired them. Romney needs to resolve that basic problem in order to win, or he will end up like the last Massachusetts politician on a major party ticket: competitive against a president the country is ready to part with, but not a plausible enough alternative to close the deal. These voters were the target audience of Romney's acceptance speech and all of tonight's programming. Marco Rubio's introduction was designed to energize the conservative base without offending those people. There was a bit of a detour with Clint Eastwood. I liked Eastwood's speech. It was funny, original, and ironic. But I can't say how it will play with television viewers. Some might find it bizarre. Did Romney knock it out of the park? By no means. Much of his speech was workmanlike. He also seemingly left the door open to another war in the Middle East in a foreign policy section the Obama campaign should attack, rather than spending time looking for racially charged dog-whistles. Romney tried to do what he needed to do. It remains to be seen whether he convinced swing voters he was more Mitt than machine. <em>James Antle is editor of the Daily Caller News Foundation</em> |