Romney sinks himself
Article added on September 19, 2012 at 20:09 Italian time
  
Mitt Romney, ever a public relations genius, has added another nail in his electoral coffin. An “unfriendly” guest secretly taped with his cell phone the speech the Republican presidential candidate gave to a group of rich fundraisers in Boca Raton, Florida.

The speech has already been commented a gazillion times. It gave Obama's fan club on the MSNBC show The last word with Lawrence O'Donnell more than just one point of attack (some of them of course as unfair as ever, some more to the point). President Obama wasted no time. He appeared on CBS's The Late Show with David Letterman to tell the audience statesmanlike that, unlike Romney, who had said in his speech that 47% of the voters don't matter to him because he can't win them over anyway, he, Obama, had said on election day that he would work as hard as he could to be the president of the 47% of Americans who had voted for John McCain too. Under applause, Obama said: “If you want to be president, you have to work for everybody, not just for some.” According to the president, “you don't meet anybody who does not belief in the American dream and the fact that nobody is entitled to success, that you got to work hard.” In response to Romney's speech, Obama stated that “there are not a lot of people out there who think that they are victims or ... that they are entitled to something.”

In fairness to Romney, it is obvious that he would also try to be the president of all Americans. But words matter in a campaign. There are no secret speeches to inner circles. Pretty much everything will be leaked one day or another. A presidential candidate has to look presidential at all times.

Mitt Romney committed a series of blunders. His grasp of foreign policy seems to be very limited, as was Barack Obama's, before he became president. Romney's command of speech was hilariously limited. His presidential project seems to be very sketchy. To insult roughly half of the American voters is not a wise campaign strategy.

The bottom line remains that Mitt Romney is the better candidate than President Obama when it comes to the understanding of the overall economy in general and the financial sector in particular. Obama's economic numbers remain weak. The state of the United States finances, growth and job numbers will matter on election. But in a close election, they won't be the only deciding factor. The Romney campaign has to get its act together or the world will have to live another four years with the Messiah as the leader of the planet's only superpower.

Mitt Romney is right that the United States under Obama go further down the road to ever more entitlements, to an always bigger state-controlled sector of the economy, to ever more redistribution of wealth and to ever more public debt. But if you give a speech as the presidential contender, you have to fully understand the subjects you are talking about, you have to give correct facts and figures, and you should look presidential (ask for that last part a certain John McCain).

Unless a last minute world crisis overshadows the election, together with the economic numbers, although not quite as important, the debates between Obama and Romney will decide the presidential race. With the level of rhetoric skills displayed at the Florida fundraiser, the Republican candidate has no chance against the smart man in the White House.

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