Yet he comes out of his drubbing in South Carolina with a perfect problem.
Rarely has there been a figure in American politics whose personality and achievements—taken as individual parts—so powerfully conveyed both uncommon success and a kind of reassuring conventionality.
But these same traits—taken as a whole—have produced someone struggling mightily to connect with the national mood and moment, much less reassure voters that his experiences and values align with their own.
The widening gap between Romney in theory, a man who oozes plausibility as a potential president, and Romney in practice, a candidate who just might be missing some kind of intangible something, is now a dominant storyline in the GOP presidential race.
There may be many reasons Romney had troubles in South Carolina—more than 70 percent of primary voters on Saturday wanted someone else—but the fact that he lost so resoundingly to a man with a political and personal journey as turbulent as Newt Gingrich's suggests a possibility more far-reaching than last weekend’s surprise.
Americans may prefer politicians with visible flaws—outsized appetites and messy scandals like Gingrich and Bill Clinton—or at least with twisting and improbable personal journeys. Of the past two presidents, George W. Bush had two decades of drift and excess before finding direction, and Barack Obama described his own history of alienation and painful searching that preceded his political success. » | Jonathan Martin and John F. Harris | Monday, January 23, 2012
