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Romney’s Hollow Indignation

Peggy Noonan notices that Romney is a data-driven business consultant: He comes across like a businessman who studied the data and came up with the formula that will make the deal. That’s probably the nicest thing anyone has written about Romney in months. He is “a businessman who studied the data,” and he has been […]

Peggy Noonan notices that Romney is a data-driven business consultant:

He comes across like a businessman who studied the data and came up with the formula that will make the deal.

That’s probably the nicest thing anyone has written about Romney in months. He is “a businessman who studied the data,” and he has been for decades. To the extent that we can know who Romney “really” is, that is who he is. Romney’s difficulties stem from two related facts: 1) not many people find business consultants interesting or appealing as political leaders; 2) Romney has gone out of his way for years to make people think he is something else (culture warrior, aggressive nationalist demagogue, etc.). When he is most “himself” as the businessman, many voters are underwhelmed, and then he alienates more people when he tries to fake being something he clearly isn’t.

Noonan continues:

A particular problem is that he betrays little indignation at any of our problems and their causes. He’s always sunny, pleasant, untouched by anger. This leaves people thinking, “Excuse me, but we are in crisis. Financially and culturally we fear our country is going down the drain. This guy doesn’t seem to be feeling it. So why’s he running? Maybe he thinks it’s his personal destiny to be president. But if the animating passion of his candidacy is about him, not us, who needs him?”

This illustrates one of Romney’s problems. He is frequently indignant, but somehow it goes unnoticed. He attacks Obama as the agent of American decline all the time, he rails against the idea that we are in a “post-American world,” and one of the main themes of his campaign has been lamenting how awful he thinks things have become, but somehow it all rings hollow. He says all of the things that he thinks anxious voters want to hear, and he drowns them in saccharine optimism about how the best days are yet to come, but most people can’t take it very seriously because they get the impression from Romney that he doesn’t really believe it, either.

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