Why Mitt is Losing

September 24, 2012

So let me offer some general ruminations on why Mitt Romney is losing his race for the presidency despite the structural problems, like long-term high unemployment rates, with President Obama’s re-election bid.

1. Incumbency. The simple fact is that most presidents who seek reelection win reelection. Since 1900, only five presidents who who sought reelection lost in their reelection bids: Taft, Hoover, Ford, Carter and Bush I. The other twelve won.

Incumbency is a powerful advantage. Presidents get Air Force One and “Hail to the Chief” and the ability to shape the media narrative on a daily basis. Challengers don’t. That doesn’t mean challengers can’t win. It just means it’s hard.

2. Radical ideology. One ironic side effect of the 2010 Congressional elections was that they further deepened the national Republican party’s shift to the conservative and ultraconservative wings of their party. This strategy worked in 2010, when it was easier to convince voters that Obama was a radical lefty and things were getting worse … and when turnout was quite low, favoring motivated radicals (e.g., the tea party). Presidential elections, however, are elections with much bigger turnout, which tends to mitigate the power of radicals.

In taking the ideological stands he took to win the nomination, Romney alienated himself from lots of more moderate voters–an alienation he has not been able to overcome (see point 3 below). The irony is that “Massachusetts Mitt” might have had a much easier time beating Obama … but would have had a harder time winning the nomination.

3. The flip flop problem. Conventional wisdom says that candidates move to the center in the general election campaign. However, Romney has changed positions so many times in the past that, in a desperate effort to both appeal to conservatives and moderates, his campaign has tried to say … well, nothing more than “I’m not Obama.” “I’m not Obama” does not require firm statements that would either reinforce Romney’s conservatism (and thereby alienate moderates) or appeal to moderates (thus reinforcing his image as a flip flopper).

This strategy is failing. It might have worked against “empty chair Obama,” the socialist leading America over a fiscal cliff into an Islamist future, but it doesn’t work against real Obama, who is president over a slowly recovering America and who regularly flexes US military muscle (often in violation of international law) to achieve American foreign policy goals. “I’m not Obama” isn’t enough when people don’t hate Obama … but it’s all Romney can offer since otherwise he alienates one wing of his party or the other.

4. The likability problem. I’ve posted before on this point, but it is simply the case that Romney is not a natural politician. He is an immensely talented man in his field, but he is stiff and comes across badly on TV … which is the means through which we learn about candidates these days. It is his misfortune to be running against one of the most telegenic and charismatic politicians of the recent past (with Reagan and Clinton as Obama’s obvious competitors for the title). Hence even people who don’t think Obama is all that great a president (Politicalprof among them) still prefer Obama as a person to Romney.

All of this is hard to overcome: an okay candidate who is likable, appealing, fairly temperate and President of the United States is at a marked advantage in any contest with a not particularly likable, indecipherable person associated with lots of radicals who is NOT the president.

Romney could have won this election. There’s a route or two available by which he may yet win. But the path is getting narrower, and I see no reason to believe that Romney has the skill set to recognize the appropriate track and maneuver onto it. The Romney campaign is indeed very bad, as Peggy Noonan has recently noted. Me, I’d call it epically bad.

It’s quite a thing.

11:19am | URL: https://tmblr.co/ZPUuPyT-MYBc

(Notes: 130)