October 17, 2007
"technical proficiency."
Jay Cost of the HorseRaceBlog...
....For a while, I have had the suspicion that, while Romney understands the nuts and bolts of politics, he misses many of its subtleties. He reminds me of myself back when I used to play the piano. I'd study up on a piece by Mozart - and eventually I could play it with great technical proficiency. However, I never could play it beautifully. All of the notes hit in the right order - but for some strange reason, they never seemed to sound right. That is the impression I have had of Romney for a while. He's doing everything right, but it just is not sounding good to my ears....
That's sorta my impression too. Of the Republican front-runners I like him best in theory, but there haven't been any moments yet when I wanted to say, "Listen to this guy!"
Posted by John Weidner at October 17, 2007 04:50 PMEh, it'll come with time. If you watch any old videos of presidents pre-election, they all look like lightweights, they all look off. Amazes me that we ever choose any of them...but you pick the person who will implement wise policy and execute it effectively, and the presidency will settle on him or her...
I think Bush will be remembered as a great visionary who gave the most inspirational speeches - but it'll be 20 years before folks realize we were inspired by them...at that point, of course, it'll be like the 250K people who were at old Cleveland Municipal Stadium for Len Barker's perfect game - but still, I'll welcome them to the fold! And I imagine the same will be true for Romney with his stiffness, or Giuliani with his sca tteredness...
