My Tuesday column wonders when Romney will seriously try to open an airplane window mid-flight.
I'm old enough to remember quite clearly the 1992 campaign. Seeing as how I was a political science major and 1992 was the first presidential election in which I could vote, I wrote extensively for my campus newspaper in support of Paul Tsongas and, eventually, Bill Clinton. Four years earlier, I'm semi-ashamed to admit that I was a Republican and supporter of George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign (my youthful indiscretion) so I enjoyed a small bit of insight into how Republicans think and, specifically, the potential flaws in the Bush style, especially when matched up against a juggernaut underdog campaign like Clinton's.
Bush 41, who had already spent 12 years in the White House, had the potential to sound out-of-touch with middle class life, and, when confronted, he had a tendency to get, well, snotty. If he wasn't careful, he could fall into such a trap and it would only bolster Clinton's chances.
An infamous news story from 1992 illustrated Bush's inability to connect with "regular people" -- in fact, it made him seem hilariously out of touch with familiar technology. At a campaign stop, Bush appeared to be fascinated by a super market bar-code scanner. A report in the New York Times by Andrew Rosenthal described the president as "amazed" by the familiar device. How did the pretty red laser beam guess the correct price of a half-gallon carton of milk?! Incredible! Now, to be fair, Snopes has declared this story to be "False," citing other reports that didn't necessarily describe Bush as having "a look of wonder" flickering across his face. However, there's videotape of the event and he certainly looks confounded by the space-age miracle price-knower food beam -- something most Americans had been familiar with for years.
Regardless of the story's veracity, it's locked into American political canon now as a example of what not to do if you're trying to appeal to regular people.
Yesterday, Mitt Romney's seemingly innocuous remark about airplane windows could be slotted into the same category as Bush 41's stupified wonderment at the check out line. Continue reading here...