Mitt Romney has an image problem – he looks like a politician
Posted By RichC on May 26, 2012
Although the polls have risen for GOP candidate and presumed Republican nominee Mitt Romney, he still suffers an image problem. I’m not sure what it is …maybe he just looks too much like a politician? 
Some say he seems stiff or scripted; that he is out of touch with regular America. The talking heads paint him as a 1% who doesn’t really care about the rest of America, but slowly I think Mitt Romney is growing on people … or maybe the nation is just growing tired of the empty promises of “hope and change?” (now that’s a politician)
One would think beating President Obama, with all the failure, the excessive spending, the big government agenda and partisan cronies of his administration… would be easy? But something is holding Governor Romney back. He can’t shake the perceived image that he is just a successful capitalist looking out for the rich fat cats (hmm, mainstream media problem?) Even as a Romney supporter, I wonder what the real Mitt Romney is like … is he really out of touch or is that just an image thing?
Peggy Noonan had an opinion-editorial piece on Friday in the WSJ and she highlighted a few campaign trail questions asked of Governor Romney. I enjoyed a couple answers regarding mistakes.
It’s his own mistakes "that make me want to kick myself in the seat of my pants," that "cause me to try and be a little more careful in what I say. . . . I’ve had a couple of those during the campaign, which have haunted me a little bit, but I’m sure before this is over will haunt me a lot."
Asked for an example, he mentions "I like to be able to fire people." He meant, he says, those, such as health-insurance companies, that provide inadequate services. "I have to think not only about what I say in a full sentence but what I say in a phrase." In the current media environment, "you will be taken out of context, you’ll be clipped, and you’ll be battered with things you said." He says it is interesting that "the media always says, ‘Gosh, we just want you to be spontaneous,’ but at the same time if you say anything in the wrong order, you’re gonna be sorry!"
Another observation had me sort of connecting a little bit more with “this guy” … that of using technology … and in particular the way he uses the iPad. (too bad it’s not a public blog … yet)
He keeps a campaign journal on his iPad: "Now this is going to make my iPad a subject of potential theft!" He used to speak his entries, but now he types them on an attached keyboard. "I’ve kept up pretty well, actually." He writes every two or three days, so that 10 years from now he can "remember what it was like," but also to capture "the feelings—the ups the downs, the people I meet and the sense I have about what’s going to happen. It’s kind of fun to go back and read, as Ann and I do from time to time."
Perhaps the real question we’ll all have to ask is what we want America to look like? There will be two candidates, two parties and two very different paths. We can see where the current administration is taking us, and we will have to choose. Personally speaking … I prefer the America I grew up in even with all of it flaws and faults. The European socialism model we are inching toward is not at all attractive to me.
"I think there have been inflection points in American history where the course of the nation has changed, where culture, industry, even military strategy have changed." The Civil War was one such time, the turn of the last century another.
He [Romney] believes we are in one now: "I think America is going to decide whether we will put ourself on a path toward Europe—whether we will become another nation dominated by government, where citizens are dependent on government for the things they want in life, where opportunity is sacrificed, where military strength is depleted to pay for government promises, where unemployment is chronically high and wage growth chronically low. That, in my view, is the course the president has put us upon." If Barack Obama is re-elected, "it will be very difficult to get off that path. If I’m elected, I will usher in a period of economic vitality," that will leave the world "surprised."
Not only the world: "America is going to see a vitality we had not expected."
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