Justin Frank: Why Mitt Screws Up?

People are asking , "What's with Mitt Romney's trip to the London Olympics?" He has made so many gaffes that the Daily Mail's political editor asked: "Do we have a new Dubya on our hands?"That question is most important for the American voter. What drove Dubya were anxiety and fear, much of which he masked with his tough guy swagger and rhetoric, and with his disarming sense of humor. When asked direct questions by the press, however, Bush would often freeze like a deer in the headlights. His slips of the tongue became the stuff of talk show hosts, magazine articles and even books. Now we have Mitt Romney, the putative Republican candidate for president in the 2012 election. His gaffes are different from the 43rd president's, they don't involve mispronouncing words or frequently issuing nonsensical sentences. They are more social gaffes, ones that seem to be made without much thought, if any. Bush was trying to say thing he couldn't say. Romney is not trying to say anything in particular, other than answer questions or make comments when called upon to do so. In fact he is too casual, and what comes out is often carelessly hostile. When Brian Williams asked him what he thought of the London games, Romney first tried to answer the question directly, something most politicians usually don't do. He said, "It's hard to know just how well it will turn out." He then began to talk about his own work, running the 2002 SLC winter Olympics in what seemed like a canned response. What strikes me is the confidence with which he spoke, and the remarkable lack of thought he exhibited. This has become a pattern for him, and not just on this trip, but it is more noticeable than before, because he is largely left to his own devices, without prepared remarks that he could use in informal conversation.