Why Do I Dislike a Presidential Candidate?

Something In The Way He Walks    

    

     OK, What spurs on my opinion of candidate Mitt Romney? It’s in the way he walks.

     It doesn't originate rom what has always haunted me in George Harrison’s song “Something,”: its first line -- “ Something in the way she moves…” When I see Derek Jeter walking to the plate in the last of the 9th, Yankees down one run, I see greatness. So much so that he can strike out or hit the winning hit, without a dent in that greatness. So too with Bruce Springsteen, Coach Bill Belichik, Nelson Mandela: there is something in the way he walks.

    
     Why write like this? Today, for the very first time, I saw Mitt Romney on TV. He made a long walk from the left side of the stage to the rostrum, ready to deliver the most major speech of this campaign. When he took that first step, I saw it and I yelled, “That’s it! That’s it! Something in the way he walks.”
  

     And I knew the source of my feelings about him. He doesn’t walk. He minces. Short, tiny steps, careful steps, not in a shuffle, but in that deliberate way of getting through the naked emptiness around him until he reaches the shelter of the rostrum, chest high, his wall of protection from stares. It’s as if he fears getting caught out in the open, away from his close campaign people, clutching so tightly on his speech with both hands, offering what he hopes is a smile, frozen on his face, his eyes concentrating on the politician who had just introduced him. When he reached the rostrum, I imagined I could hear the whoosh of pent-up breaths releasing him to regain campaign posture and stature.

     It all hit me hard, very hard, very clean, very definite. For the first time, I saw. This candidate is not blessed as are Jeter and Belichik and Mandela with true greatness, he is a very private man, at home in boardrooms, a governor’s office, the top deck of one who ran the Olympics years ago. He sits and thinks. An idea comes. He calls an assistant. Tells her. She rushes out to tell the committee, which then puts it into action. No public speaker, not even accustomed to being out in public at all, he has to rely on others to guide him when outside the safe enclosure of the office, change his tie, write his stuff, pat his shoulders as he reaches the top step of the platform, ”You’re on your own now, Mitt. We need you. Good luck. Don’t break a leg.”

     What I must do now is watch him finishing up a TV presentation, particularly to see whether his walk away from the platform is as characteristic as his walk toward it. If so, I shall nod. If not, I shall not listen to him.