While his rhetoric on President Obama is often sharp, nearly everything about his campaign — the way he’s dressing, the places he’s going, and the stories he’s telling — appears designed to make Romney appear more, well, average.
But some suggest the updated style runs the risk of making him seem calculating, and willing to change his image if that’s what it takes to become president. When he gave his first major speech of the campaign — outlining his defense of the Massachusetts health care plan and his critique of the national one — he went without a tie.
“Somebody’s told Romney, ‘Your hair’s too perfect and you’re always dressed to the nines,’ ’’ said Bob Vander Plaats, a conservative power broker in Iowa who four years ago was Mike Huckabee’s state campaign chairman.
“But when I saw him give the health care speech, authenticity became a question for me again,’’ he said. “You’re a CEO giving a major speech with a PowerPoint presentation, and you don’t have a tie? In my world that doesn’t line up, and in his world it doesn’t line up … Just be who you are.’’
Romney advisers are eager to portray him as caring about average people with average economic problems — and have the photographers there to capture it. When he was in Orlando, he went to an H&R Block office and talked about how complicated tax forms can be. When he was in New Hampshire, he went to a gas station to talk about how gas prices are soaring. When he was in Las Vegas, he toured a neighborhood beset with foreclosed homes.
It all has the effect of making Romney look not like a president, but like an average person, reflecting the calculation that his advisers already think he looks presidential but still needs to connect.
They acknowledge he can come across as stiff and at times awkward, but say that he’s getting better and has learned from his first presidential bid.
