Few people would accept Mitt Romney to win a speech-making contest against Barack Obama. But that’s not the point. Romney’s trying to unseat the 44th president, and John Podhoretz asserts in a New York Post column that Romney’s Republican nomination acceptance speech did what it needed to do.
Romney made no effort at soaring oratory. The speech’s quality was epitomized by the contrast he sought to draw between Barack Obama’s outsized sense of himself and Romney’s plain-spoken common sense: “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”
No more fancy talk; that has gotten us nowhere. “What is needed in our country today is not complicated or profound,” he said. “It doesn’t take a special government commission to tell us what America needs. What America needs is jobs. Lots of jobs.”
He and his speechwriters didn’t try to pull off a killer soundbite, or to design an individual moment they hoped would lead every newscast.
No, the man himself was the message — the businessman, the man of faith, the patriot, the loving husband, the caring father, the devoted son. The unflashy success story who’s asking for your vote so he can roll up his sleeves and fix what’s broken.
