Seriously what is Romney thinking? Does he just say the first thing that comes to his mind? In what universe is it a good idea to criticize the Olympic hosts the day before the Olympics? And does he not get briefed about how to address the important people he meets?
This is the sort of blundering which makes me fairly confident that Obama will win. All this tactical/news cycle stuff added together may only account for 2-3 points in the end but in a close race that will be the difference. For a successful politician Romney has an extraordinary capacity to make unforced errors.
Oh, so he knows where Salt Lake City is. You can tell it’s in the middle of nowhere by all the nothing around it. For that matter, I’ve flown over it and there doesn’t seem there is much “there” there, eithere.
So what exactly did Romney say about the OG prep? The link in the OP only seems to have screenshot of UK media bashing him, but not the original statements.
The Daily Mail is a British tabloid. A conservative one, in fact. James Chapman is the paper’s political editor and a self-proclaimed Tory, and has been tweeting Mitt Romney’s visit to his country. His tweets:
Romney blunders again by revealing he’s had (supposedly) top secret briefing by John Sawers, MI6 boss. Do we have a new Dubya on our hands?
— @jameschappers
Another Romney triumph as he forgets Ed Miliband’s name: ‘Like you, Mr Leader, I look forward to our conversation here this morning’.
Another verdict from one Romney meeting: ‘Apparently devoid of charm, warmth, humour or sincerity’ #romneyshambles#mitthitsthefan
— @jameschappers
So far, he’s insulted their hosting of the Olympics (and apologized), forgotten the names of important people, revealed a secret meeting, and tried to curry favor with his ‘Anglo-Saxon’ remarks.
Now if Romney was a dispassionate sports analyst there would be absolutely nothing wrong with what he said; it’s pretty accurate. It was just an incredibly stupid thing to say given he was a US politician visiting the UK.
My hunch is that Romney has poor social instincts. He is intelligent and has worked hard to overcome this, achieving great success in business and politics but every now and then his cluelessness breaks out. I imagine Richard Nixon was also something like this but he didn’t have to deal with cable/internet media frenzies. Modern US presidential politics is pretty brutal to politicians who aren’t comfortable in their skin.
I think Romney is pointing out the sharp divide between American conservative ideals and the rest of the world. So for example:
Regarding security: You weren’t able to successfully contract it out to the lowest bidder? For shame!
Regarding the labo(u)r dispute: You put up with public sector officials demanding fair wages and rights? In the US we bust those unions and show them who is boss!
It never occurs to him that the rest of the world can’t perceive the creeping evils of socialism. What we’re seeing is his amazement that a large organization has an opportunity to screw a smaller one and for some reason isn’t doing it. That’s not how we do things at Bain Capital, gosh darn it!
Personally i admire the fact that one day after boasting about our historic Anglo-Saxon alliance he’s managed to get into a slanging match with our Prime Minister. That’s impressive, in an unfortunate sense, but impressive none the less.
I think he’s running his election with the philosophy that he’s Obama’s only viable competition, and anybody who doesn’t want Obama to be president again is going to vote for him so it doesn’t much matter what he says or does.
Going by my dad’s experience behind the scenes in the political arena back in the day, he should have said : Like you, sir, I look forward to our conversation here this morning. Sir is never wrong, just like ma’am for a woman. A well timed sir or ma’am goes a long way, and polite is never wrong.
I just can not see Mittens being taken seriously by anybody with half a brain at this point in time.
:rolleyes::rolleyes: His criticism about the private security firm were about its lack of personnel not its cost and having a strike during the Olympics is unfortunate. That said, obviously Governor Romney should have been more tact about this.
