Bowling alone

The wins yesterday in Arizona and Michigan by Mitt Romney, known to the media travelling with him as Mittens, show that Romney is nowhere near the Republican candidate presumptive. Michigan, in particular, was too close – he won by just three three percentage points – given the fact that he was born and raised in the state.

Romney has the money to sustain a campaign through tough times, but even if he wins the nomination, my earlier prediction that he will beat President Barack Obama is beginning to look tenuous at best. The more I see of Mittens, the more I realize he lacks the common touch. Too often, he makes a comment that causes me to cringe. Yesterday, he tried to explain why he doesn’t try to rouse crowds. “I’m not willing to light my hair on fire to try and get support,” he said. Or how about that man-of-the-people line last week when he said that his wife “drove a couple of Cadillacs.”

As Democratic commentator James Carville has said, “I can’t imagine one of his senior staffers saying, ‘Let Mitt be Mitt.'”

Mitt’s father, George,  was equally hampered. The telling line about the governor of Michigan was this: “Way down deep he’s shallow.” During George’s own run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 he rolled a bowling ball for the photographers but it went into the gutter. He threw another, also into the gutter. He would not stop and, with a grimmer and grimmer look on his face, threw more than thirty balls before he finally managed to keep one safely in the alley all the way to the pins.

My advice to you, Mittens, is this: don’t go bowling.