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Go Home Why Mitt Says The Things He Says

THE STUMP JANUARY 12, 2012

Why Mitt Says The Things He Says

BY ALEC MACGILLIS

For all the talk this past week about Mitt Romney's latest gems -- his "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me" line and his "There were a couple of times I wondered whether I was going to get a pink slip" -- I'm surprised more people haven't reckoned with the fact that they were quite inconsistent statements. One was meant to express empathy with economically distressed voters, one was meant to reflect a business-minded toughness and clarity. They were spoken within a day of one another. So what gives? Well, here's what many are missing in trying to make sense of why Romney says these sorts of things. It's all about the context.

No, not just the context of what he meant to say when he said them (the "I like being able to fire people" line was said in regards to health insurance choice.) I mean the context in which he says things -- that is, the place and audience he is speaking to. After observing Romney on the trail, it's become clear to me that he is someone who is acutely aware of the sort of people he is speaking to, and that he often tries too hard in trying to reach what he imagines is the id of that group.

The best candidates, of course, are those who are able to pick up on the vibe of the audience and tailor the tone and content of their remarks accordingly. With Romney, the tailoring is far more crude and obvious. Some of it is relatively innocuous, if wince-inducing -- in Iowa, the lines of "America the Beautiful" that he quotes are the ones about "amber waves of grain," while in New Hampshire it's "purple mountains majesty." But occasionally, the imperative to meet the imagined sweet spot of his audience produces the lines that make unfortunate headlines and fodder for fun video compilations by his rivals. It is no accident that the "pink slip" line came when Romney was speaking to voters in Rochester, N.H., what he knows from his ample time spent in the state to be one of the cluster of struggling former milltowns clustered in the Seacoast region near the Maine line. The irony, of course, is that the crowd that he drew to the town Opera House was, from all appearances, more upscale than the one that Rick Santorum drew the next day in nearby Somerworth. But data-driven Romney knew that he was in hard-luck country, and so out popped the empathy line, comically overdone.

And where was he when he made his "I like being able to fire people" remarks? Speaking before the Greater Nashua Chamber of Commerce. The Romney campaign has been open about the fact that it is trying extra hard to reach out to local businessmen -- the insurance guys and small-town bankers who belong to the Rotary and the local Chamber, types that Romney sees as his natural constituency. Even when he's in front of a general audience on the trail, he'll often ask whether there are any businesspeople in the room. So there he is at the Nashua Chamber, wearing a blazer and dress shirt as opposed to the jeans and plaid that he had the day before in Rochester, and he starts to wax businessman. The inexplicably poorly worded line makes slightly more sense if it's seen as an attempt to build camaraderie, confidence, with the guys in blazers arrayed in front of him. In Mitt's mind, this was locker-room talk, Chamber-style: "Hey, don't you guys kind of get off on being able to cut off a lousy supplier or a service provider? Kind of a little kick, delivering the justice of the free market on your very own?"

So keep an eye out for this. Now that he's in South Carolina, you can be sure he, like the other candidates, will be doing plenty of union-bashing around the NLRB-Boeing standoff. But if you hear that a candidate's dropping hints about secession or quoting John Calhoun, don't assume it's Rick Perry. It might be Mitt Romney, ever so subtly playing to the room.

Follow me on Twitter @AlecMacGillis

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19 comments

Alec McGillis, would you perchance be of French-Canadian origin? Congratulations! Anyone who doesn't get it should read Calvin Trillin on a hypothetical Romney presidency. http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2012/01/16/120116sh_shouts_trillin

- AaronW

January 12, 2012 at 6:55pm

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Romney is Zelig.

- Nusholtz

January 12, 2012 at 7:15pm

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Or Chance, the gardener.

- AaronW

January 12, 2012 at 7:47pm

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I am repeating myself here. My wife and I once engaged in an epic legal battle with a person who was something like a scammer and something like a cult leader; a battle that was appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court before we prevailed. The signal trait of this person was that he told his prospective victims (who were mostly very gentle and idealistic people) exactly what they wanted to hear. The whole affair involved an intentional community, where he functioned in a kind of bubble where he could get away with his shenanigans for years. The actual trial involved immensely convoluted and technical issues of real estate law (and other matters too complex to discuss here) so it ran for three weeks (a long time in the trial business), but a dispassionate person familiar with the whole affair who sat in on a day or two of the trial later said to me, “I could see in a couple of hours that he was going to lose.” The reason was that he was no longer functioning in the cloud cuckoo-land reality of the intentional community. The article makes a similar point about Romney. He is skillfully telling some of his audiences much of what they want to hear in a context where few are going to question what he serves up. But when what he says is removed from this very narrowly-focused context and examined by people who do not share the same memes and assumptions, a lot of the ragged seams and frayed threads are exposed to pitiless bright lights and do not hold up so well. Romney is sort of like a very skillful football player making his best moves in a baseball game. Nusholtz' and AaronW's points are right on.

- skahn

January 13, 2012 at 12:02am

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It may encourage Mr. (?) MacGillis a little to learn that I liked this well enough to finally break down and subscribe. Happy days.

- jhmccloske

January 13, 2012 at 5:48am

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Alec, thanks for the laugh - about Romney talking secession in SC. Probably why he is in Florida :) Newt's new attack ad has Romney speaking French. I have been waiting for that. Poulet in every pot! WaPo has a series on Leadership, and Romney's leadership play is he is a numbers guy who can fix things. Americans are yearning for a President who can translate a spreadsheet in between his "Mitt Fits".

- K2K

January 13, 2012 at 6:37am

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Context or not, data-driven Mitt should know that there are cameras and microphones everywhere.

- wildboy

January 13, 2012 at 9:25am

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Two word summary: Romney panders.

- Mikelawyr22

January 13, 2012 at 10:10am

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And this is exactly why Romney is NOT a leader, not presidential material. He is hesitant, unconvinced, uncomfortable in his own skin - poor man. He always is searching for the right thing to say because he doesn't know the right thing to do. He is always expecting his older brother or sister to smack him with the other hand, the hidden hand. Therefore, he is afraid to stand up straight. He can manage for the moment, and that was why he was rewarded: optimizing a business scenario instead of leading a community of people. And you get the behavior that you reward, HR folks tell us. No doubt he can proselytize at the doorway; he does not think actually to enter and abide and seal the conversion. And that's by his own admission. I ain't saying he's not smart, or even good at what he does, or did. I'm only saying that he's not... complete. And I don't think we need that again. Of course, I'm not really sure who is, in this election. Well, at least Mitt justifies my cynicism.

- davidblock

January 13, 2012 at 10:38am

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say anything Mitt. I guess this is why they are keeping Mitt away from audiences full of minorities because lord knows what idiocy he might mutter. maybe I am being a bit harsh though, I heard tell he is opening up his rallies to include both Germanic and Scandanavian types of people.

- blackton

January 13, 2012 at 10:43am

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What, exactly, has this man done with his vulture-jillions since he's left office? Has he started one non-profit? Given any thought to something besides his own creepy, morally empty ambition to become President? Has he ever funded one NGO, or say - a mission to Haiti, joined any of Clinton's initiatives - just anything at all? As far as I can tell, Mit Romney he done nothing of substance for ten years but build mansions and run the Olympics (I'm sorry, but so the hell what? I imagine that almost any competent senior manager could do so and its not like the stakes are high)? I do not count running for President as an accomplishment of substance, especially for someone so wealthy who spends most of his time bragging about his competence. At what again? Mayor Bloomberg is the quietly one of the largest individual philathropists in the world. John Edwards turned out to be an amoral creep too, but at least he funded an entire division at UNC to study poverty and ways to address it. Mitt Romney has never lifted a finger for anyone else but himself in his entire life.

- WandreyCer

January 13, 2012 at 10:51am

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MacGillis isn't clear whether he thinks Romney is pandering (a conscious act) or Romney is socially awkward (especially among the plebeians) and simply makes a mess of things when he tries to connect to his audience (an unconscious act). I suspect it's more of the latter, but I'm curious what MacGillis thinks.

- rayward

January 13, 2012 at 11:32am

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Great comment, WandreyCer. More insightful than Newt's movie.

- gwhitaker

January 13, 2012 at 11:35am

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"I guess this is why they are keeping Mitt away from audiences full of minorities because lord knows what idiocy he might mutter." Blackie, do you remember Romney's "Who Let the Dogs Out" moment? There is evidence out there how Mitt and Minorities don't mix. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDwwAaVmnf4

- wildboy

January 13, 2012 at 11:58am

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That question's been on my mind too, Wandrey, but you've asked it much more eloguently than I could. Bravo.

- ballston

January 13, 2012 at 12:06pm

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Second Wandrey's comments. On a N.H primary thread, one voter said of Mitt, "He's being doing a lot of good lately'' What? What exactly has Mitt Romney done except run for President? (and spend his kids' inheritence). Like Wandrey, I am so sick of hearing about the 2002 Winter Olympics. We're going to elect a man president because he ceremoniously oversaw the building of a skating rink and a ski jump? From the right all we hear was that Barack Obama was nothing more than a community organizer. At least he was that, and a U.S. Senator As far as I'm concered, based on his record in the last decade, the Mittster is no more qualified to be President than Curt Gowdy or Howard Cossell, or any one of those snowboarders selling Red Bull.

- dubyadoubte

January 13, 2012 at 1:00pm

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actually Wandrey, Romney run the Tyler Charitable foundation that he and his wife fund, it has around 10 million in assets and yes, most of the money goes to the Mormon Church and Conservative "charities" but some of the money does go to things like MS research (which Ann Romney suffers from), so I don't think you can say he has not lifted a finger. In any event if he ever releases his tax returns we can see how much he has really put out. It is easy to fund a charity with 10 million when you have 250 million To take one example from 2003, he gave 1,000 to the boy and girls club of America, 1,500 to the Jimmy fund, 10,000 to shelter for homeless veterans, 36,000 to the United Way, and 1,925,000 to the Mormon Church (and a few minor other donations) totaling 2,006,200.

- blackton

January 13, 2012 at 1:12pm

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OK Black thank you - I stand somewhat corrected (thanks anyway everyone else). Do you mean ONE thousand dollars to the Boys and Girls Clubs? That's appx half what I give, but OK. Ten thousand to house homeless vets? Same figure he made in that bet to Perry. Touching. I suspect that 1,925,000 figure is called "tithing" and is a fundamental requirement of his church. I still say he's done amazingly little compared to other out of work politicians, especially very wealthy ones and certainly nothing visible that would be politically nuetral or even risky. Hell, even Gingrich made a video with Pelosi about climate change (too bad's he's been such a wuss about it during the campaign) and worked with Sharpton literacy issues (ditto). My mind isn't changed about his fundamental selfishness.

- WandreyCer

January 13, 2012 at 1:21pm

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Ultimately, Romney is a tragic figure. The Hollow Man. His words echo inside his head-chamber. He doesn't even believe himself when he talks to the Chamber of Commerce. In the end he's nothing but a salesman, and often a poor one. That's why he was such a good job destroyer. He wasn't pushing anything but pink slips. That's an easy sell. It'll be interesting to see what he does in Florida. He can't trash Social Security and Medicare. Too many people depend on government help there. But Romney has been criticizing the very idea of dependency on the government. It'll be fun to watch him talking out of one side of his mouth at one campaign site and the other side at the next site.

- magboy47.

January 13, 2012 at 1:49pm

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