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Sighing Women, Springsteen Shout-Outs, and Hard Truths

Readers, I fell down on the job last night and took in a baseball game in Philadelphia. As punishment, I watched Ann Romney’s and Gov. Chris Christie’s speeches online between the hours of midnight and 1:00 a.m. Ugh: Such fare is hard enough to endure during television primetime. With its talk of big sisters, little […]

Readers, I fell down on the job last night and took in a baseball game in Philadelphia. As punishment, I watched Ann Romney’s and Gov. Chris Christie’s speeches online between the hours of midnight and 1:00 a.m. Ugh: Such fare is hard enough to endure during television primetime.

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With its talk of big sisters, little sisters, mothers, grandmothers, daughters, widows, and women sighing each night loudly enough that I could hear it if I just listened, Mrs. Romney’s was a speech obviously not aimed at me. But she was for the most part charming and pleasant. At times a little ingratiating: “I love you women!” And grasping for working-class cred: “Some of you might not know this, but I am the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner.”

There were just two notes where I found her badly off-pitch. In both instances, Mrs. Romney protested too much: defended herself and her husband from charges that no one ever filed. First: “This is important. I want you to hear what I am going to say. Mitt does not like to talk about how he has helped others because he sees it as a privilege, not a political talking point.” Eh? That Mitt Romney is reticent about his personal generosity is compelling but not entirely relevant. The attacks on Bain Capital — I’m assuming this is what Mrs. Romney was seeking to inoculate her husband from — center on what Mitt Romney did to earn his fortune, not what he did with it afterward.

Then the bit about the nature of their marriage: “What Mitt Romney and I have is a real marriage.” I’m not sure what Mrs. Romney intended with that line. Whoever suggested otherwise? Do the Romneys think they’re running against the Clintons? Say what what one will about the Obamas, but they appear to a person to have a “real” marriage.

By far the most effective line of Mrs. Romney’s speech: “This man will not fail.”

That is the message Romney should drive home relentlessly for the next two months. You may not like that I’m a fat cat. You may find my religion strange. You may think I’m stiff, smarmy, and lacking in conviction. But I’m a winner — and I’m going to succeed at the job of president just as I have at everything else I’ve ever tried.

Now, as for my homeboy, Christie. The book on Christie’s keynote speech was that it took him far too long to say the words “Mitt” and “Romney.” This is true. But it was worse than that: Even when Christie did finally mention Romney by name, it was in a light that reflected back onto Christie’s accomplishments as a tell-it-like-it-is unpleasant truth-teller. Essentially, Christie was saying, we should vote for Romney because he’s just like Chris Christie!

Thematically, Christie was overgeneral and unfocused. The business about a second American century, about how our grandchildren will judge us, about answering history’s call — this was pabulum, not tough talk. Throw in the phrase about “shared sacrifice,” and one could easily have mistaken these portions of Christie’s text for an Obama stump speech. In Christie’s defense, keynote speeches are not supposed to resemble State of the Union laundry lists. And there is in truth very little about Romney’s four years as governor that is worth trumpeting on a national stage.

The gravamen of Christie’s remarks was that Obama panders and governs according to polls. Romney — a non-panderer! That should’ve been a laugh line. Take, too, Christie’s assertion that Republicans “don’t believe our seniors are selfish.” This is wildly at odds with the campaign that Romney is actually running, one that is predicated on the assumption that voters age 55 and over will jealously guard their Medicare benefits in the voting booth. Christie, wisely, chose not to link the Romney platform, which calls for across-the-board tax cuts, with the notion of “shared sacrifice.”

Christie, also wisely, chose not to elaborate on the “hard truths” that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are so brave to tell us: namely, lower taxes, more defense spending, the same budget allotment for Medicare that the Obama administration proposes, and less spending on the poor and some other stuff they’ve yet to specify. These sound a lot like Tim Pawlenty’s forgotten “hard truths.”

Christie did mention listening to Darkness on the Edge of Town at the Jersey Shore. Now you’re talking. That was my favorite moment of the evening — even better than the sighing women.

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