Prior to Mitt Romney's latest foot-in-mouth moment, the subject of candidates' gaffes had been widely regarded as an entertaining but ultimately frivolous side-show in the usually dour world of political campaigns. That all changed Tuesday after the Republican challenger's comments, secretly recorded at the home of a wealthy fundraiser, had many commentators predicting it would be decisive in the impending elections.
Romney, who made a fortune leading a private equity firm, wrote off 47 per cent of Americans as implacable supporters of his opponent Barack Obama. They "believe they are victims," he told his audience at the 50,000-dollar-per-plate dinner. "I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives," Romney said, saying that it was not his job to be concerned with winning their votes.
The video from a May meeting with donors, released Monday by leftwing website MotherJones, contains a few other gems, such as Romney joking that he would be more likely to win the election if he were Hispanic. He pulled the rug out from any chance of an even-handed Middle East policy by stating his belief that Palestinians would never agree to peace and were "committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel."
Obama had his own gaffe in the summer, when talking about how the economy benefited from infrastructure and government spending. His statement to business owners - "You didn't build that" - was ambiguously framed. Republicans pounced on the comment, especially during the convention a few weeks later that nominated Romney as the party's standard-bearer, saying that it showed the left-leaning Obama's disrespect for private enterprise.
Obama's running mate, Vice President Joe Biden, has become infamous for speaking gaffes, making frequent fodder for political satirists but making little impact on the presidential race. Romney, whose past gaffes had reinforced his image as aloof and out of touch, refused to back down from his comments, except to say that they were "inelegantly stated," in a late Monday press conference attempting damage control. Bloomberg News political commentator Josh Barro reaction was blunt: "Today Mitt Romney lost the election."
In New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait described Romney as a "sneering plutocrat" whose comments "disqualify his claim to the presidency" by characterising half of Americans as "hostile parasites." Even reliable conservative supporters such as William Kristol called the remarks "arrogant and stupid" and questioned if Romney was the right nominee for the conservative Republican Party.
New York Times' conservative columnist David Brooks said the comments showed Romney "doesn't know much about the country he inhabits." "It's what self-satisfied millionaires say to each other," Brooks said. "It reinforces every negative view people have about Romney." Those negative views have been building with a lot of help from the candidate himself. In his first foreign trip as the presumptive candidate he made all the wrong headlines on visits to Britain, Israel and Poland.
The tour was meant to show voters his foreign policy expertise. But the media coverage made him out to be more of an expert in the art of the faux pas. His comment about London's preparedness for the Olympics - "There are a few things that were disconcerting," Romney said after a security firm failed to provided contracted guards - insulted his British hosts. Then he riled Palestinians with comments on Israel's rights to Jerusalem and its supposedly superior business culture.
"What is this man doing here?" asked Saeb Erekat, a top Palestinian official. "Yesterday, he destroyed negotiations by saying Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and today he is saying Israeli culture is more advanced than Palestinian culture. Isn't this racism?" Romney's slip-ups brought to mind the frequent public mistakes uttered by President George W Bush, the Texas good-'ol boy who was Obama's Republican predecessor. "Like Bush, but without the cosmopolitan flair," huffed The Economist. Obama's deputy campaign chief Stephanie Cutter described the comments as "startling." "I think it's extremely troubling that you're running to be president of the United States" she told NBC News, "and you've written off half the country."
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