“Those Who Know Him Best”
In 1976, with voters still fuming over the Watergate scandals and Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, President Ford faced a tough uphill fight against a newcomer with anti-Washington credentials, former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter. I remember a TV ad the Ford campaign's brilliant media team of Doug Bailey and the late John Deardourff crafted to plant doubts about the not-well-known Democratic nominee:
"Those who know Jimmy Carter best are from Georgia. That's why we thought you ought to know ..." And what followed was the viewers seeing on-screen and hearing a voice read a scroll of Georgia newspapers such as the Savannah News, the Augusta Herald and the Marietta Journal, with the announcer adding for each, '... endorses President Ford."
The argument was uncomplicated. If the candidate's neighbors and friends who have know him the longest have doubts about him, then maybe I, as a voter, ought to have a few second thoughts.
That Ford ad, not surprisingly, had no influence on Georgia voters, some 67 percent of whom voted that November for favorite son Carter. In fact, most presidential nominees, perhaps aided by hometown pride, do carry their home states — or at the very least run better there than they do nationally.
In 2008, John McCain won Arizona, just as Barack Obama carried Illinois and Hawaii. In 1984, Democrat Walter Mondale, who lost 49 states to Ronald Reagan, still won Minnesota, his home state.
Two exceptions do come to mind. In 1972, Democrat George McGovern won just over 37 percent of the national vote against Richard Nixon and also lost 49 states, including his home state of South Dakota, where the Democrat ran eight points better than he did nationally. In 2000, Al Gore by 4 percent of the vote lost his home state of Tennessee — and, with it, the White House — to George W. Bush.
The last candidate to win the White House while losing his home state was President Woodrow Wilson, who despite being re-elected failed to carry New Jersey.
Why all this could be relevant in 2012 is contained in the most recent Suffolk University poll (the same poll that in 2010 accurately forecast Republican Scott Brown's upset win to succeed Ted Kennedy in the Senate) of voters in Massachusetts, where Mitt Romney has lived for 40 years and where he served as governor from 2003 until 2007. True, Massachusetts is a deep blue state, but Romney, according to the survey, trails Barack Obama among likely voters by a landslide 64 percent to 31 percent.
Democratic partisanship cannot fully explain why, when asked to rate Mitt Romney personally, just 32 percent of his home state electorate judges him favorably and some 60 percent of voters judge Romney unfavorably.
No presidential nominee in U.S. history has ever risked receiving such a cold shoulder on Election Day from, to paraphrase the 1976 Ford campaign, "those who know him best."
Mitt Romney is smart, successful and exceptionally well-educated. He is by all reports a really good husband, father, grandfather and friend. He is handsome and well-spoken, not completely unimportant factors. Yet in the most recent Pew Research national survey, when voters were asked "which presidential candidate connects well with ordinary Americans," 66 percent named Obama and just 23 percent said Romney.
One possible explanation comes from a Republican friend who compares the current campaign to an old advertising story. In an effort to corner the U.S. dog food market, a pet food CEO assembled a team of the world's best canine nutritionists to develop the new dish and deployed the most brilliant packaging people to present the new product. He hired a crack advertising team, which created a dog food jingle half the nation was humming, and using the best sales force, got the new dog food the best shelf placement in U.S. supermarkets. Sales of the new dog food were abysmal. Nobody could explain why. The angry manufacturer was disbelieving, until his secretary leveled with him:
"The dogs don't like the dog food."
That may be one explanation.
To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
COPYRIGHT 2012 MARK SHIELDS 
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6 Comments | Post Comment
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Sir;... I must respectfully disagree with your assessment of Mr. Romoney... When he presents himself he does so in halting fashion... We he defines himself, he looks out of place... When he defined the forty seven percent who will never vote for him he dis so with all the prejudice and presumption that class constantly feeds their supporters... That was the man... Ecce Homo... That is what he believes... And out of his mouth is revealed a person so free of guilt and understanding that no cries for mercy will ever reach his well educated ears...
He thinks we do not take responsibility??? When has this people ever had responsibility???... Was it when the supreme court year after year denied the ability of the legislature to give justice by law to working people... We would still be working sixty hours a week if it were up to him... We are a republic, and one in which the rich were always given an edge... Certainly, people have worked their way out of poverty, but they have traveled that distance on the backs of working people who were continually denied democracy and the justice that would have been within their power with democracy...
What would that man not consider an entitlement??? Would demands for fresh water and air count???... Education does not seem to be a priority with him... Tax cuts for the wealthy do seem a priority... This is not just a man out of touch with reality... He is out of touch with humanity... The basic elements of economy are lost to him... He would not compare favorably with Henry the seventh of England who made his country formidable by avoiding war like a plague, exporting products and keeping capital to home... That whole class of Mr. Romoneys has exported our capital to buy empire that we are then forced without income to defend...They have driven our incomes down to the point where our wages will no longer bear taxation...
He is correct to see us not taking responsibility, and as victims... We have no choice in the matter and were constitutionally given no choice, and what choice we had we have now to share with the unlimited influence of money in politics...
My bet is that capital is always born like Genghis Khan, clutching a clot of blood... It is covered with guilt and responsibility that Mr. Romoney wants to deny, but that the poor have never had...We can elect people.. That is our sole choice in the matter of our future, but we cannot elect them as fast as money can corrupt them... So our fate is fixed unless we do take responsibility, and make revolution our defining value... So long as America has a choice, it should not be Mr. Romoney or anyone of his class who is elected...
Their gain is our loss...So long as we take responsibility for our lives, and blame our miserable conditions on the limited choices we have made, we will suffer in silence and try to endure... The only group denying responibility is that one with any practical choice, and they say: Not MY Problem... They made it, and they better make it go away!!!
Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Thu Sep 20, 2012 2:51 PM
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Mark: Only one person has commented about your column in 19 hours. Why do you think that is?
Comment: #2
Posted by: MikeR
Fri Sep 21, 2012 7:05 AM
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Mark: Just like the dogs you wrote about, American voters know what they like, but they don't know what's good for them. Dogs will chase cars, challenge bigger and meaner dogs, and eat their own poop. Voters will vote for someone who will destroy the economy, ignore the Constitution, alienate our allies, apologize to our enemies, and divide the country by pitting one income group against another. None of that really matters though, does it? He likes to play b-ball, he hangs out with the 'kool people', and he can SING! We are so screwed.
Comment: #3
Posted by: MikeR
Fri Sep 21, 2012 7:12 AM
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Re: MikeR;... Your analogy floats like lead feather... A dog will also defend to the death that man who feeds him and kicks him... While dogs may not always know what is best for them they are loyal as many people are not, and an economy that encourages disloyalty will destroy its society...And to state the obvious; people are not dogs even if they are worked like dogs, and are raised to believe they are living in a dog eat dog world... Dogs never lived in such a world, and people never have until now...The more we have as a nation the less we can enjoy of it...Just as the rich are now finding that the personal economy of every company, of doing more work with less labor is leading then into a situation without profit, so the poor are finding they have no means of support, and are blamed for having no means of support...The government allows them no say, and yet the 47% are supposed to bear all the responsibility for their own condition...Sell that!!!
Think for a moment Mike... Does the republican not have his own 47%, and could he not count on them if were to sprout horns and cloven hooves??? That one who said there are no great men; only great commitees should have said: There are no great men; only great percentages....
Listen to the way they talk of us when they feel alone... We are not people... We are numbers...To hear how they consider their prey in the quiet of their own company reveals their miniture souls better than the strongest electron microscope...Think of us as victims, as impediments, and obstructions, as object only standing between them and the world as they would will it, and ask: how long would we last if our lives rested upon their silken desires....
Mike; does anything beside your contempt of the working class unite you to your wealthy attitude??? Are you not jumping up for a class that would not stand up for you if for them you lit yourself on fire??? To blame the poor for the poverty they suffer, and to blame all the 47% for the insecurity they vote against is like saying sugar in beans make you fart...
If the aim of wealth is irresponibility Mr. Romoney has offered his credentials to be one with the rich... We fight their wars, and bear their share of taxation, labor for them all our lives for no gain what so ever, and suffer the loss of rights for their privilage and these people say they do not owe us anything... The obligation of the rich to society has been unilaterally cancelled by the them... I guess that means we are on our own... Forget looking to government for justice... It is time to find justice within ourselves, to give each man his due, and do justice everywhere....
Thanks...Sweeney
P.S... Take some relief in the fact the if You are scrood by honesty, then you have been fairly scrood... Why is it you folks don't raise a whisper against Mr. Romoney when he clearly and and obviously lies, but you hate him for revealing the truth???... Is honest a quality no president can afford??? He shined a light on your avarice for money and your cupidice for power... He mirrored all your hatred for the victims the rich have made and yet are powerless to destroy, and he fed them the nectar of propaganda you all consume so you can face your children in the guise of human beings...The say there is no tragedy like a man who has found himself out...What of the tragedy of finding you all out???
Comment: #4
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Fri Sep 21, 2012 10:06 AM
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Like obama defended Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three others: Sean Smith, a Foreign Service information officer, and Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty, two former Navy SEALs working as security personnel at the consulate in Benghazi?
Comment: #5
Posted by: David Henricks
Sat Sep 22, 2012 7:21 AM
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Re: David Henricks;.... A president cannot carry a gun for every foreign service man, but he can encourage a climate of trust between our country and all other countries...If I may slop together some metaphores: For Mr. Romoney to poison the well that we all have to drink from as the price of getting elected really looks like a scorched earth policy to all rational people...
Is he looking for total war with Islam??? There is a point near our borders where politics should end, where we should take the unity we should have found through government to all other people so we can talk with one voice, meaning, the voice of our president...Don't worry about our president making us look weak... Worry about division making us actually weak... I honestly think that any president that goes to war on a lie as Mr. Bush did is a criminal... War is the ultimate expression of national will, but when war drums drown out the words of the wise and the arguments of the reasonable, it is certain what ever unity was inspired by lies will falter under trial...
We have blown our treasure having wars of choice, and those wars of choice made a few people rich, and all of us poor... These wars against Islam have destroyed all the trust Muslims had once had for us, and to get elected, Mr. Romoney wants to rattle the sabre... He is either a gdamned nut, or his appeal is to gdamned nuts... If we cannot afford peace; how can we ever afford more war??? As a simple matter of arithmatic, the idea of fighting all those people is ludicrous...As a moral question, so much death cannot be justified, and we would sooner get sick of killing them than we would run out of people to kill... It appeals to the religious, the Christians, the evangelical who believe that when it comes to killing non Christians, that God will provide...
I think this is the ultimate proof of the failure of limited democracy, that a people kept ignorant because they have no power to demand education, in time, come to dominate all of society with their ignorance... If such people were actually given a choice they would have long ago demanded to know the facts, and would have grown tired of suffering their own stupidity... Their stupidity used to rule them has become an irresistable force in politics... It is not like they have become educated, or will... No one could get elected without spouting ignorance, and no one could spout ignorance better than the ignorant themselves...
In most respects I am content to see such people govern themselves until they suffer their own ignorance to the fullest possible extent, and so seek the facts... In international affairs we have had too much of stupidity at the helm, and it has cost us too much to bear... They worry about America looking weak... They should worry more about our actual weakness, because with injustice the general practice and the rich bleeding us we cannot possibly be strong in fact...
The world is beating the crap out of us in educating people, and our colleges are educating many where our own children cannot afford to go...Who does this serve but the dull children of the rich who think it some how easier to justify their rule over the ignorant and uneduated??? An intelligent and educated mind is the most powerful force in the world and America is losing hers...At almost every level of education the influence of magic, myth, and superstition is felt, and where they leave off, the power of politics begins... The right whines about its loss of influence at the university level, but by then the damage they have done to society is impossible to correct...To look at history and to recognize how often the better educated, the more intelligent and informed have beaten up on peoples less advanced is to fear for our future... We are in far worse trouble than most of us will ever know...
Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #6
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Mon Sep 24, 2012 4:54 AM
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