Romney is too far removed from ordinary voters to ‘go with the flow’

THE guys who are currently preparing Mitt Romney for the first big presidential election debate are caught between a rock and two hard places.

They have a candidate in whom impulsivity is twinned with indecision — a lethal combination. They have a candidate who is stilted and charmless. And they have a candidate who initially positioned himself to the extreme right in order to be selected and now hasn’t enough time to pivot back to the centre.

Despite national disappointment in the Obama presidency, despite the fact that the incumbent has become a shrunken, joyless version of his earlier self, it is this triad of personal traits that most endangers Romney in televised debates.