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For Republicans hoping to hold on to the White House, it was a chilling weekend.  The GOP hopefuls descended on Michigan’s posh Mackinac Island for one of the season’s top events.  All the big boys came, and most of the little ones, too.  If David Freddoso’s reporting in National Review is to be believed, none of the top tier candidates impressed.  Reporting on Saturday, Freddoso bluntly stated that Romney bombed.  The real shock came even later in the day when Freddoso implied that Fred’ s speech was even worse.  These speeches came on the heels of Rudy Giuliani’s NRA address earlier in the week.  That’s the speech that Rudy interrupted to take a cell phone call from his wife.

Everyone knows where I stand in this campaign – I’m a Romney guy.  I know him personally and have for a long time.  I’ve always thought he would make an exceptional president.  I offer the preceding as my mandatory qualifier.  Feel free to dismiss what follows.

At this stage of the game, none of the Republican candidates is particularly sharp.  Fred’s speaking style is slow and uninspiring.  Rudy keeps doing goofy things like taking cell phone calls from his wife during the middle of speeches.  And Mitt continues to show an odd fondness for uninspiring corniness and a penchant for unforced errors.

LET ME START WITH MY GUY.  In the past few days, he said no fewer than three things that I consider groan-worthy.  In a gratuitous swipe at Rudy, Mitt chided the Mayor for not being able to mobilize his family to support him.  He said of his own family’s work on his behalf, “That’s been a big part of what’s ignited our support.”

I think this comment clearly falls into the unforced error category.  This is the kind of statement that shouldn’t even be said by the campaign’s surrogates, let alone its principal. I’m assuming the statement was made out of carelessness, not design.  If it was out of design, a surrogate would surely have done the bidding.  And it would have been one truly hideous design. 

So let’s assume it was carelessness; Mitt has wandered into the minefield of saluting his family’s support before.  It wasn’t the campaign’s high point. Mitt’s been at this too long now to make an unforced error of this sort.  At this level of the game, spontaneity is often synonymous with “mistake”. 

The other two groaners were definitely by design.  During his Mackinac speech, Mitt sad that he would move the “In God We Trust” from the back of our currency to the front.  He also assured the gathered Michiganders that he’d “make sure that our future is defined not by the letters ACLU, but by the letters USA.”

These comments bother me a lot, probably more than they bother most people, even ones who don’t support Romney.  Mitt Romney is quite possibly the smartest, most capable man I’ve ever met.  He has an understanding of the issues that would impress the least hygienic wonks.  By nature, Mitt is drawn to substance, not sizzle.  Not only were those hollow applause lines beneath him and lame, they’re contrary to his nature.  This is an era that cries out for a serious candidacy.  Those weren’t serious positions.  Mitt is better than this – I know it, and that’s why I support him.  But the rest of the country hasn’t known him for over a decade.  If the rest of the country gets to know the guy I know, he’ll be a political force.  If they get to know a guy who talks about what side of the coin “In God We Trust” should go on, it will be a different story.

Mitt’s not the only Republican candidate with issues.  Fred Thompson spoke in Mackinac on Saturday night.  Freddoso said he was dull.  Again, I wasn’t there.  But this squares with most every report that’s come from any and every Fred speech over the past 5 months. 

As is the case with Romney’s stumbles, this is mystifying.  Fred can read a script; we know that.  And the heart of giving a good speech is delivering a carefully crafted text in an impressive manner.  Fred’s been at this for five months, and he’s still putting people to sleep on the stump.  What gives?

And then there’s Rudy.  What was up with that cell phone thing?   The middle of a address to the NRA isn’t the time to show your warm, uxorious side.  Obviously.  This conduct is just flat-out strange, in addition to being strangely unprofessional.

BUT HERE’S THE BAD NEWS.  Hillary hit the Sunday talk shows yesterday and performed pretty much flawlessly.  Look, I’m never going to be a fan of the former First Lady.  Her phony laugh grates on me, as does her penchant for answering an easy question when asked a hard one.  But say this for her - she’s a pro.  As such, she doesn’t make any of the amateurish errors that our guys do.

Last night, I had the pleasure of being a guest on Boston’s Pundit Review Radio with Kevin Whelan and Gregg Jackson.  We had two guests from the Weekly Standard, Jonathan V. Last and Bill Kristol  Jonathan noted how much Hillary has improved as  a wholesale politician since her first senate campaign.  She may still be a glacier, but she’s a markedly less frosty one than she used to be.

Bill Kristol came on, and I began one of his segments by mocking the maniacal laugh that Hillary used to kick-off her interview with Chris Wallace.  We had used the laugh as a running gag for the whole show.  Bill wasn’t impressed with the laugh or much of her performance, and he wondered if I was.  I told him that of course I’m not going to vote for her, but at this date she has more game than any of our guys.

I hate saying that.  But it’s true.  February 5 is four months away.  On February 6, we’ll have a presumptive nominee who will have his every utterance ruthlessly scrutinized for the following nine months.  John Kerry couldn’t endure that kind of scrutiny.  That’s why he lost to an unpopular incumbent presiding over an unpopular war.

Our guys have been rehearsing for nine months or so, and now have four short months to get themselves ready for Broadway.  It’s not time to push the panic button yet, but it’s getting there.

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