Krauthammer: Romney Will "Not Be Known as the Great Connecter"

Charles Krauthammer discusses Mitt Romney's acceptance speech.


If he becomes president he will not be known as the "Great Connecter". He may be known for a lot of other things, but that's not what he does. But I thought he did try to the best of his ability, and I thought it worked out rather affectingly--the sort of very plain-spoken, prosaic review of his life--yet not trying to go over all those wonderful stories, leaving that to others.

I don't think he had a high bar that he had to meet because of how badly he's been portrayed. I found the entire speech a very interesting combination of deeply personal and yet intensely nationalist.

I thought the importance of that line--about Obama being concerned about the globe and the oceans--and then Romney saying "I'm going to be concerned about you." Obama lives on the moon, Obama's the citizen of the world--as he proclaimed himself in that speech he gave in Berlin in 2007--and he [Romney] says "I'm your president, this is a unique country. We're not interested in that. We're not going to go abroad and apologize."

And those lines, the foreign policy lines--in an election that is overwhelmingly about the economy--got the most applause and the most energy from the crowd, because he was saying one thing: Obama has not succeeded, and he has failed--not just you and your family--but the nation. Because an America this stagnant is not one that we understand and not one that we can be.