Introducing Mitt Romney

This week, while the people of Louisiana are once again battening down the hatches in the face of yet another hurricane, Florida is playing host to political pomp and ceremony as the Republican Party officially launches its fight to take back the White House.

Today, the Convention is fighting a losing battle against a global media rightly focused on the devastation being wrought upon New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast, exactly seven years after Hurricane Katrina tore the famous old city apart.

But that will all change tomorrow when Mitt Romney takes to the stage in Tampa and formally accepts his party’s nomination for President. After a long, slow-death primary campaign, his name and face are widely recognised across America, but beyond its shores, not a lot is known about Mr Romney the politician, and even less about Mr Romney the man. That is a problem.

In fact, to judge from some of his high-profile policy deviations, it might even be quite difficult for his electorate to know exactly what he stands for.

As Governor of Massachusetts, he pushed through healthcare legislation that was widely seen as a template for President Obama’s radical healthcare reform… yet he now denounces the ill-fated federal project and demands its repeal on (right-wing friendly) grounds of individual liberty.

Last week’s controversy regarding some Republicans’ views on abortion brought into focus Mr Romney’s record on the issue, to which he has taken a somewhat softer approach in the past than the explicitly pro-life position he assumed during the primaries. His recent uncharacteristically hard line on immigration – a hot topic in American politics of late – is another cause for scepticism.

Finally, there is the subject that tops the priority lists of almost all American voters – the economy.

The last two years (since the mid-term elections in which the Republicans made huge gains) have been dominated by a battle of wills between the two sides in Congress that has led the federal government perilously close to bankruptcy and brought Washington politics into disrepute.

All of this is because Congressmen and women are unable to reconcile the Democrats’ desire to balance the books mainly through tax rises for the wealthiest and the Republicans’ zeal for shrinking the role of the state through spending cuts on everything except defence.

If ever any US Presidential election looked likely to be settled on a single issue, it is this one.

The two candidates not only advocate different solutions to America’s current fiscal mess – not to mention the slow recovery of jobs and output from the recession and financial crisis – but they represent a nation that is ideologically polarised to a degree not seen in a generation.

No wonder the election is too close to call; it may well come down to which side can animate its supporters most effectively to drive up favourable turnout – in the usual swing states, and some unexpected ones. The Republicans believe that although Mr Obama is mobilising the same army of volunteers ‘in the field’ that helped him sweep to victory four years ago, the message is not being swallowed quite so easily by an electorate feeling let down by failed policies and broken promises.

No wonder, also, that Mr Romney – a relatively centrist, consensus candidate – has chosen Paul Ryan, an archetypal fiscal hawk revered by the Republican right, as his running mate. The two may not see completely eye-to-eye on this and other key issues, but it is hoped that choosing Mr Ryan allows Mr Romney to ‘cover all bases’ and deflect criticism that he is ‘not Republican enough’.

The lingering problem that I referred to earlier, though, is one that must be addressed urgently, starting tomorrow night – a fear that to too many Americans, the would-be President is not ‘like them’ enough. A multi-millionaire venture capitalist-turned-state governor with an MBA from Harvard and residences in 3 US states is unlikely to connect with the American public in quite the same way as his eloquent but down-to-earth competitor.

Over the course of the campaign, he may well get away with that. In the showpiece debates that will follow in the coming months, he will get the chance to impress by engaging with a political foe on an intellectual level; but in the biggest speech of his life, he must look down the camera and convince the American people that he should be their next leader.