This week former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney dropped out of the presidential race, but he did it with some flourish and footprints from the past.
Why did Romney fail to outlast Sen. John McCain? The reason can be traced to what Michael Luo wrote Oct. 16 in The New York Times: “He faces a delicate task in trying to stake out common ground with conservative Christians, while not running afoul of deeply rooted evangelical sensitivities about any blurring of distinctions between Mormonism and conventional Protestantism.”
So it was a matter of dancing the two-step for Christian conservatism that made his overall image seem out of focus. We wondered why at times he didn’t come across more directly.
Yogi Berra said, “Public speaking is one of the best things I hate.” Throw in a divided constituency and you have trouble in River City. However, Romney had his moments. In his withdrawal speech, he said he did it “for my party and my country.” This may be the most heroic moment we have glimpsed, resonant of Cincinnatus going back to the farm or Scipio to his villa.
Romney explained that if he fought on to the convention, he would obstruct the national campaign and clear a pathway for Democratic hopefuls Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. “And in this time of war,” Romney said, “I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.”
Such words belie the true backbone of the speaker. In one gesture he attained the kind of celebrity he could not have achieved by losing to McCain, or perhaps in winning, siphoning off the electorate for the Democrats. Even if his message was at times blurred, and he never quite convinced us with his rhetoric, a clearer picture of Mitt Romney came through the last sound bites of his campaign.
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