Bogart to Romney: Have an affair

Politico is running the most peculiar headline: "Defining moment eludes Mitt Romney."

Isn't his problem precisely 47 percent too many defining moments, from $10,000 bets to empty chairs?

And isn't one month before the election a trifle late for candidate "definition," especially for a candidate who's been running twice as long as the current president has served?

Lectures a Republican strategist, "They’ve got the same people, doing the same thing they’ve been doing for eight years and there is no creativity." Says another, "Get rid of all that staging. Be real ... something dramatically real."

Reminds me of a story. During the '56 Stevenson-Eisenhower rematch a Democratic insider dropped by the California home of Humphrey Bogart, who was dying of esophageal cancer, to pay respects and shoot the political breeze, a conversational exercise that always lifted Bogart's spirits. Ominous news, mentioned the insider; it seemed there was a rumor floating about regarding Adlai's having once had an affair. The campaign was worried the story might get out. Worried? retorted Bogart. It's the best thing that could happen to Stevenson, he half-joked. It might prove to voters that he's human after all ... or as today's GOP strategists would put it, that he's "something dramatically real."

In this, if you any longer care, there's something of a paradox. Mitt Romney, more than any nominee in American political history, has campaigned for the White House as the "perfect" candidate--as the consummate businessman, the untarnished family man, the flawlessly nimble "fix it" guy and even as the impossibly, impeccably presidential-looking guy. And yet never has any candidate ever come across as something so flawed, so dramatically unreal--and undesirable.

Comments

[Robert Lipscomb]

There was a storyline in "Seinfeld" when Kramer went to Hollywood and began trying to sell a script; well not a script - a treatment; well not a treatment - concept. the other running gag was that this concept was a hybrid of two successul series - something like, "You know like Star Trek meets the Rockford files." And of course everyone bought into it and his idea became viable.

One would expect a real turnaround businessman to have plan for the turnaround; and if not a plan - a script; and if not a script ...

If Romney has a concept is apparently is Reagan meet W but with CGI special effects - or something.

Even more insufferable is the media false equivalancy that Obama does not have a plan either. Never mind 3.5 years of his presidency and negotiations and proposed legislation.. So this election is like Romney's concepts meets Obama's plan.

Or something.

[Peter G]

I guess all that money invested in processing Mitt through the Stepford Institute for Politicians with Presidential Ambitions was wasted. And he won Best in Show!