Candidate has another teary moment
Says he's not ashamed of having emotions
By Michael Levenson, Boston Globe Staff | December 19, 2007
After his eyes filled with tears for the third time in as many weeks on the presidential campaign trail, Mitt Romney explained that, no, he is not immune to sadness and grief.
"I'm a normal person. I have emotions," Romney told reporters in New Hampshire. "I'm not ashamed of that at all."
And yet several former associates said yesterday they were struck by the sudden display of emotion from a man known more for crunching data and giving PowerPoint presentations.
"I never saw him mist up during the 2002 campaign," said Ben Coes, who managed that campaign for governor. "I was talking about it with my wife this morning. I think it shows a level of toughness and confidence to be able to talk about something that obviously touches you emotionally in front of an audience."
Romney first noteworthy misty-eyed moment of the campaign came at the end of his nationally televised speech on faith and politics earlier this month in Texas. As the invited crowd stood and applauded, the usually unflappable Republican paused, the emotion showing on his face. "God bless this great land, God bless the United States of America," he declared.
He showed unusual emotion again on Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," when he recalled the moment in 1978 when he heard that the Mormon Church had ended its ban on full participation by black members.
"I heard it on the radio and I pulled over and literally wept," Romney said.
On Monday at a Londonderry, N.H., military contractor, Romney told a stock campaign story about watching the casket of a US soldier killed in Iraq come off the conveyor belt of a plane at Logan International Airport in Boston. The soldiers he was with saluted and passengers in the terminal paused and put their hands on their hearts, he said.
But then, as he added a new twist to the story, his eyes welled again. "I have five boys of my own," he said. "I imagined what it would be like to lose a son in a situation like that."
That moment prompted reporters to ask him whether he was showing a different side - and Romney to respond that he was just acting like anyone else.
Still, Samuel L. Popkin, a pollster who worked for the famously lip-biting Bill Clinton in 1992 and for the decidedly less demonstrative Al Gore in 2000, said such moments could help Romney loosen up his image.
Voters "want to know that what they're getting is real and not the sales pitch, and emotion is one way of knowing there's a real person and not just a plastic wind-up doll or a scripted person," Popkin said.
For Romney, "being too articulate and too handsome are real problems because both of those give the sense of total polish - like there's a veneer there where the real person should be," Popkin said.
Several prominent supporters, however, rejected any political calculation for the recent weepiness.
"For however perfect his hair is, he is a human being," said Adam D. Probolsky, a pollster who is chairman of Romney's campaign in Orange County, Calif.
And just because he gets misty, does not mean he is weak, the supporters said.
"When he's president and there's a natural disaster, I'm pretty darn sure that he ain't going to be breaking down into tears and looking for his blankie," Probolsky said. "He's going to be making things happen and getting things done. But when you're running for office you sometimes show more of who you are."
Representative Bradley H. Jones Jr., Republican leader in the Massachusetts House, said Romney is typically more restrained because of his background as a management consultant and private equity investor.
"Mitt Romney is an emotional guy," Jones said yesterday. "I think by upbringing and experience in the business world, you don't really show your emotions. There's almost a stoicism where you show your emotions inside your family and you don't let them out publicly."
What will it be then? God told him in a dream the holiest political stances?
