Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s communications problems run a lot deeper than his aide’s remark that he can reset his candidacy for the general election just like an Etch A Sketch, says
Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan.
The Etch A Sketch comment “was unfortunate in two ways,” she writes. “One is that it reminded a lot of people — well, me — of how then-Sen. Barack Obama, in 2008, was widely viewed as a blank slate . . . He knew it; he admitted it was part of his mystique. So he was a kind of Etch A Sketch too, only he let the voters turn the knobs.”
Second, the remark pointed to Romney’s fundamental problem, says Noonan, who was a speech writer for President Ronald Reagan. “He's making it up as he goes along. He'll be one thing today and another tomorrow.”
Actually, it’s worse than that, she says. “He acts like a guy who can be captured. The world is full of mischief, full of groups, tongs, clubs, and cabals, and this one says you have to back a certain fiscal plan, that one an environmental approach, and this one says you've got to go to war.”
If Romney doesn’t adopt a core set of beliefs, “every day of your presidency will be a bloody struggle to capture the Mitt,” Noonan writes.
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