Mitt Romney did last night what the Republican Convention did all week: He made a potent case to those voters who haven’t yet made their minds up that he’s worthy of their vote. And he did so with an artful touch that’s likely to earn dividends in the days and weeks to come.
This wasn’t a speech for the ages. But it may have been one of the most effective speeches by a presidential nominee in American history.
Romney made no effort at soaring oratory. The speech’s quality was epitomized by the contrast he sought to draw between Barack Obama’s outsized sense of himself and Romney’s plain-spoken common sense: “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”
No more fancy talk; that has gotten us nowhere. “What is needed in our country today is not complicated or profound,” he said. “It doesn’t take a special government commission to tell us what America needs. What America needs is jobs. Lots of jobs.”
He and his speechwriters didn’t try to pull off a killer soundbite, or to design an individual moment they hoped would lead every newscast.
No, the man himself was the message — the businessman, the man of faith, the patriot, the loving husband, the caring father, the devoted son. The unflashy success story who’s asking for your vote so he can roll up his sleeves and fix what’s broken.
The only real coup came with its surprise tear-jerking moment, when Romney related a heretofore-unknown story about his father putting a rose on his mother’s pillow every day — and told how his mother realized his father had died on the only day in their 64 years of marriage that the rose was not there.
That story, like so much in the speech’s first half, was designed to “humanize” Romney, who lags President Obama by double digits when pollsters ask who is more likable.
(Earlier in the evening, a stunning series of tributes to Romney’s remarkable personal generosity delivered a genuine emotional wallop — and would’ve worked better for him in the half-hour preceding his arrival on stage than Clint Eastwood’s entertainingly bizarre effort at improv comedy.)
Throughout that first half, Romney talked about the importance of women just as his wife Ann did two days earlier — and took no chances he would not be heard. He talked about his mother running for Senate, and the women governors who were on the stage this week, and the heroism of his wife dealing with five kids.
This was nothing less than relentless pandering to undecided women voters. Romney and his people surely knew it.
As a former presidential speechwriter who believes in the elevating power of sophisticated rhetoric, I would’ve preferred a more muted and indirect appeal along these lines, for purely aesthetic reasons if no other. But in his contest against Obama, Romney has a gender gap, and the Romneyites are probably right that subtlety is not going to close it by Nov. 6.
Most important was the overall tone, again consistent with the big speeches of the convention — one in which the failures of the Obama presidency were entirely separated from any criticism of Obama himself or of anyone who voted for him.
Indeed, the buoyant optimism with which so many cast their vote for Obama in 2008 was given its due and then used against Romney’s rival: “If you felt that excitement when you voted for Barack Obama, shouldn’t you feel that way now that he’s President Obama? You know there’s something wrong with the kind of job he’s done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him.”
America, he said, “has been patient. Americans have supported this president in good faith. But today, the time has come to turn the page.”
Romney said his turnaround plan would create 12 million jobs — by cutting the deficit, fighting for free trade and fighting unfair trade practices, moving toward energy independence by taking advantage of American resources and championing small business by eliminating needless regulation and keeping their taxes low.
These specifics were plain as well — and nervy, since they were specific and since he can be held to account for them if he falls short as president. But the public got to hear what he’d do, without adornment.
The speech’s lack of grandeur was the point. We’ve had enough of grandiosity. He wants to get to work.
There was no big moment. The speech, taken as a whole, was a very big moment indeed.