Mitt Romney's Risky Choices

As the Republican National Convention opens tomorrow in Tampa, Florida, is it possible to take notes from the last French presidential election to predict the American election’s results?

In France, voters are largely swayed based on the personal style of the two principal candidates. They rejected (by a slight majority) the “bonapartism” of the president in favor of choosing a more consensual approach of a socialist candidate who had known, despite his extreme personal reserve, [how] to manage and reveal himself to the French during the Bourget discussion, which had launched his campaign in January 2012.

Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, finds himself today in the same position Francois Hollande did yesterday. Will he know to step out of the mystery which surrounds his personality or will he remain in the eyes of Americans as Lionel Jospin did in 2002: a disembodied, cold and distant character?

Such is the American election’s first issue, which holds a man’s personality [accountable]. Barack Obama, despite his aristocratic aloofness and intellectual approach to problems, appears quite warm and genial in comparison to Mitt Romney. Even today the majority of Americans would prefer to “have a beer” with the incumbent president rather than with his rival. What will this mean to the campaign?

Besides the candidates, their agendas must be considered. The second election issue this year is of an ideological nature: In choosing Paul Ryan as a running mate, did Mitt Romney, in French terms, choose a strategy a la Patrick Buisson? For America, the size and role of the government is a question that replaces that of the national identity. In wanting to mobilize the ultra-conservative tea party and avoid losing a single conservative vote, isn’t Romney risking the alienation of some of the moderate voters, so-called “independents” who were largely rallying behind Obama in 2008?

Of course, these voters are not very many and they are not on the whole decisive, as this “humanist swamp” could have been in France, which transferred its votes to Francois Hollande for ethical reasons.

By strengthening his campaign, by taking on more ideological leanings, doesn’t Mitt Romney the “moderate” that the Republican Party judges as too tepid also risk weakening the scope of his main message? By putting an accent on the deficit issue, Romney tells Americans “change is urgent” or “It’s me or an unavoidable decline.” But if he asks a good question, shouldn’t the Republican candidate have a good response? Even if Paul Ryan will certainly add a little diluting color to his fundamentalist ideas as a way of taking on the deficit, the American middle class is not ready to buckle up if only, at the moment, only the richest would receive important tax breaks. Could one start a big (and necessary) social debate if, at square one, everyone, contingent on their riches, doesn’t find themselves demanding sacrifices? Are you ready to challenge the benefits that society no longer has the means to assure you of?

What’s more, the ideological “hardening” regarding the economic plan is accompanied by a right turn on questions asked by society. How can women and a large majority of youth rally around a Republican ticket which claims to be responsible and modern with the economic plan, but which appears at this point backward in terms of social issues from abortion to gay rights? America could be legitimately haunted by the ghost of its relative decline, seeing the abysmal makeup of its deficits as the major source of its problems; [America] is without a doubt not ready for a social and sexual counter-revolution. And in turning the election into a referendum of Medicare’s future (read: on the size and role of the government), the Republican Party risks permanently losing the middle class in key states. At a little more than two months until the election, Obama’s chances in the United States are much better than they were in the same period for Sarkozy in France.