Humanizing Mitt Romney Means Talking More About Ann
Ann Romney revealed she had a miscarriage in 1991, 10 years after her fifth son was born, in an interview with CBS News' Scott Pelley Tuesday. She explained that her youngest son, Craig, was devastated because he'd always wanted a little brother -- something Mitt Romney had never heard before. Another miscarriage, which happened sometime between 1978 and 1981, was revealed by The Associated Press August 18, unless it's the same miscarriage, and the AP's sources are wrong about the dates, which is what a follow-up by CNN seemed to suggest. Mitt Romney has made it clear he doesn't want to be humanized. The task of being human falls on Ann, who will give a speech Tuesday night at the Republican National Convention.
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Republicans are worried that Mitt Romney won't do more to tell Americans who he is, according to Politico's John F. Harris and Alexander Burns. Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told them typical voters merely know "He’s a wealthy plutocrat married to a known equestrian." Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said Democrats "were successful in demonizing Mitt Romney, I would argue unfairly." Politico reports Republicans think the convention is Romney's chance to fix that. On Tuesday, The New York Times' David Brooks parodied the upcoming humanization, writing:
Romney was a precocious and gifted child. He uttered his first words (“I like to fire people”) at age 14 months, made his first gaffe at 15 months and purchased his first nursery school at 24 months. The school, highly leveraged, went under, but Romney made 24 million Jujubes on the deal.
But Romney doesn't seem to want to fix it. The candidate told The Wall Street Journal last week he didn't want to be put on a couch "and let it all out," that he doesn't want the campaign "to personalize me like I'm a piece of meat," that Americans are "not looking for someone to run another version of This is Your Life," and that he doesn't "have a plan to take everybody to my childhood home and say, 'Here's where I rode my bicycle'." Ann, on the other hand, has just revealed much more than were they biked as kids.
