Listen, I'm no fan of Peggy Noonan, but she knows a little bit about writing a good speech-to understate things. She knows how to get a candidate who's not so inspiring and make him inspiring.
Just see George Herbert Walker Bush's speech back in 1988 RNC convention. She understands her craft. My feeling about Ann Romney has been that it was certainly not a home run no matter how you look at it.
Interestingly, Juan Williams really nailed it to the consternation of his network at Fox when he said that she sounded like a corporate wife.
Here is Noonan:
"Ann Romney was stunning, sweet, full of enthusiasm, a little shy, a little game for the battle. Her speech was fine. I think the headline was that she and Mitt got married young, lived in modest circumstances and struggled a bit while he studied and tried to get a foothold in business. But it was scattered, full of declarations — “Tonight I want to talk to you about love” — that weren’t built upon but abandoned. Strong as the impression of personal beauty is, I think she missed an opportunity."
"Here’s how I see it. I have just spent the past two and a half days talking to people who’ve known Mitt Romney well for ten, twenty and thirty years, even more. They love him, and in all their conversations they say either literally or between the lines, “If only you knew him like I do.” It is their mantra. They mean it, and they are so frustrated. They believe he is a person of unique and natural integrity, a kind man who will give you not only his money but his time, his energy. They see him as a leader. They know the public doesn’t see this. They don’t understand why. And, actually, I don’t blame them, because it really is a bit of a mystery. If he’s so good why can’t his goodness be communicated?"
"The opportunity Ann Romney missed was to provide first person testimony that is new, that hasn’t been spoken, that hasn’t been in the books and the magazine articles. She failed to make it new and so she failed to make it real."
"I’m not sure her speech was a loss but it doesn’t feel like a gain. We’ll see. The real reaction to a highly publicized speech emerges not overnight on twitter but over days and weeks as people chat in the office and on the sidewalk in front of school. So we’ll see what they say, we’ll see how it bubbles up."
I agree on every count. Shes right that we can't yet say definitively but will over the next days or weeks. but I don't think it was a gain, whether or not it was a loss. And if it wasn't a gain it was a loss, when you remember just how much the Romney campaign put on it.
http://blogs.wsj.com/peggynoonan/2012/08/29/ann-romney-and-chris-christie/
As far as the Ryan and Romney speeches go, while we don't yet know definitively how they were received as revealed by the polls, clearly the media consensus is that Ryan really was way too blatant with his lying.
As for Romney, I notice that even conservatives like Larry Kudlow, Ben Stein, and today's Wall Street Journal are showing that they aren't overwhelmed by the speech either. Stein may not be impressed with the President's intelligent but he's no more impressed with Romney's candidacy referring to him as a "weak candidate."
http://www.politico.com/blogs/click/2012/08/ben-stein-romneys-a-losing-candidate-133987.html?hp=l7
http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/31/romney-didnt-make-the-sale/
Kudlow admits that Romney didn't close the sale. The WSJ today admits that the Democrats have an opening as Romney didn't give us any beef on his policy proposals.
Romney has promised things like 12 million jobs in 4 years and the old canard of "energy independence" although this time for "North America" rather than just the U.S. However, we got no clue by Romney-Ryan on Wednesday and Thursday how we get there-though Ryan's creative storytelling kept us highly entertained.
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