COMMENTARY | It was billed by Politico as Mitt Romney's "weekend from hell." Saturday night's Republican debate in New Hampshire was going to be the place where the non-Mitt Romneys (or "Nomneys" as they have come to be known) would turn their collective fire upon the Republican front-runner.
But as happens with many Super Bowls, this anticipated great clash fizzled out rather quickly. For reasons commentators are still mulling over, the Nomneys decided to cannibalize each other and let the Republican anointed one slide through the evening with hardly a scratch. However, the real winner of the night was not on the stage.
As the debate drew to a close, the candidates were asked what they would be doing if they were not in Manchester on Saturday night. Before dismissing the ensuing interchange as trivial, keep in mind we Americans like to get a sense of the character of the individual we are electing to the highest office in the land. For this purpose, an unscripted answer to an off-topic and seemingly silly question about personal interests is much more useful than the reply to an inquiry about some burning economic or social issue.
Moreover, such moments have the most impact when they confirm an already existing impression about a candidate. When Sarah Palin was unable to supply Katie Couric with the name of a single newspaper or magazine she read, it helped to set in stone the image of the candidate as too hopelessly uninformed about the world to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
And we may have witnessed another such incident when Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Romney replied that if they were not debating they would be home watching the BCS championship. The only problem, of course, was that the BCS championship was not being played until Monday night.
Why is this important? Americans generally elect the candidate they find most likable. The most recent incarnation of the likability criterion is the beer drinking test. As Jonah Goldberg noted in National Review, the outcome of 2004 election could have been reasonably predicted by the fact that 57 percent of those asked would have preferred having a beer with George W. Bush than with John Kerry.
Although by the standards of the beer drinking test these three failed miserably since most guys are going to want to drink and talk sports, the failure is most telling against Romney. It confirms a characteristic that is already believed about the former Massachusetts governor: That he is out of touch with the common man, who not only made up the majority of Monday night's BCS audience but who probably knew on Saturday night the actual date of the event.
Against a lesser sports aficionado, this fault might not be as costly. But with a Democratic opponent who publicizes his NCAA bracket, Romney might be better served by memorizing sports statistics than the words to "American the Beautiful."
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