Romney blew it

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Mitt Romney Nicks Leadership Cred With Unforced Errors
By Jon Ward, September 16, 2012

Mitt Romney faces challenges in convincing undecided voters that his policies would help the middle class, and that he can relate to the common man, but he has not often needed to persuade Americans that he is a leader.

Yet the Republican nominee's response to cascading events in the Middle East last week damaged him in an area where he should be strong.

The moment of maximum negative impact, however, has been largely missed. Much of the conservative punditry is still raging at the mainstream press for hitting Romney for "jumping the gun" on Tuesday night, when he issued a statement tying the White House to a statement from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

Romney's campaign did not know, however, when they sent out their statement Tuesday night, that the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, had been killed. And the point Romney was making at the time -- that President Barack Obama's foreign policy stance of greater engagement has failed to make the rest of the world appreciate the U.S. any more than before -- has been embraced by conservatives who have rushed to Romney's defense.

So while the left may dislike Romney's critique, and while it was a bit of a reach for the Romney campaign to say that a tweet from an embassy official under siege in Cairo was tantamount to an Obama administration policy, that was not the moment when Romney hurt his image as a strong leader.

Rather, it was on Wednesday morning, a few hours after Stevens' death had been announced, that Romney demonstrated a lapse in political judgment.

Once Stevens' death became known, the significance of what was happening overseas ratcheted up and the political context shifted. What was demanded of Romney was sobriety and a recognition that the United States had absorbed a psychic blow.

But Romney appeared clueless.

He was, no matter what, going to get questions that morning about his statement the night before. He could have had a leadership moment by forcefully dismissing those questions and stressing that it was a time for grieving and reflection.

But the Romney campaign was concerned that if their candidate tried to move past his Tuesday night statement, he would be pilloried by the press. And Romney has always shown a tendency to want to explain himself.

So as the nation reeled from first death of an ambassador abroad since 1988, Romney said a few words in his prepared remarks about grieving for the dead, and then engaged with reporters' questions about his criticism of the president's foreign policy. As the country mourned, the already image-challenged Republican was seen by millions launching partisan attacks.

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In Fairfax, Romney also allowed a heckler to rattle him. He told the crowd that he wanted to have a moment of silence for Stevens and the three other slain Americans, "but one gentleman doesn't want to be silent so we're going to keep on going."

Many politicians, and certainly those with presidential-level political instincts, would have known that few people would interrupt a moment of silence, and that if they did, it would give Romney all the upper hand he needed to dismiss the heckler. Romney consistently fails to capitalize on moments like this that require improvisation.

This isn't a decisive issue. It does, however, complicate his already steep challenge in communicating with and persuading undecided voters.

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The irony of Romney's missteps is that the 65-year old former Massachusetts governor and private equity executive has led a career marked by leadership successes.

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But the measure of a political candidate is the degree to which he or she convinces voters of their qualifications. And Romney did not help himself last week.

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Fair or not, this past week was a defining episode in the campaign. The Romney campaign is hoping, nonetheless, that its impact will be negligible.

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