Revenge of the Aloof

I've been watching Fox News' election coverage throughout the Republican primaries, and it is a fascinating thing to behold--more fair and balanced than expected but decidedly subdued. On election night in New Hampshire, the reaction to Mitt Romney's victory by Fox's in-house conservative pundits, Stephen Hayes and Bill Kristol, both of the Weekly Standard, was tepid at best, a grudging "well, you gotta give him credit" sort of reaction, not unlike their more heterodox peers on CNN and MSNBC.

Romney had just become the first Republican nonincumbent ever to win in both Iowa and New Hampshire. He had proved in two New Hampshire debates that he was a professional in a field of amateurs, able to deliver a message, attack his opponents and fend off attacks in simple, effective declarative sentences. He had given a sharp, smart victory speech that briskly presented the choice between his candidacy and Barack Obama's: "He wants to turn America into a European-style entitlement society," Romney said. "We want to ensure that we remain a free and prosperous land of opportunity." Actually, Romney had read those words off a teleprompter, a piece of equipment much derided by Republicans during the Obama presidency--and in a way, Romney's need for a script, his inability to summon passionate eloquence spontaneously, is what has people like Hayes and Kristol, who want a warrior able to eviscerate the President, so disappointed.

A few nights before the primary, I watched Romney perform in Exeter, N.H., at one of the weirder rallies I've ever attended. He delivered his usual stump speech, a dreadful agglomeration of political clichs--almost entirely substance-free--that culminated in the candidate's reciting lines from "America the Beautiful," a forlorn attempt to rent some fervor. Then he turned the microphone over to the evening's main speaker, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. This was something I'd never seen before: a candidate working as the warm-up act for one of his endorsers. Christie, who is as comfortable in his bulk as the actor John Goodman used to be (when he was bulky), immediately took control of the stage and the room. He called Obama "the most pessimistic man I've ever seen in the Oval Office." Why? Because Obama believes the "American pie is as large as it will ever get" and wants to redistribute it. "I believe the American pie is limitless," said Christie, with the obvious conviction of a man who knows his pies. The contrast between Romney blah and Christie ardor was embarrassing.