Here are three scenes from three recent evenings that to me told volumes about the state of this year\u2019s presidential campaign.<\/p>\n
The first was last night — a gathering of Washington conservatives. \u00a0At the reception before the dinner, I questioned a number of pollsters and pundits about the shape of the race.<\/p>\n
The daily Rasmussen tracking poll had Romney five points up. \u00a0It was the third poll in three days to show Romney ahead. \u00a0I asked a prominent pollster what I should make of it?<\/p>\n
The answer was guarded. \u00a0Rasmussen uses one hundred percent automated polling, I was told, which may produce skewed results when minorities promise to be a big factor.<\/p>\n
Well, will 2012 look more like 2008 or 2010? \u00a0It\u2019s a question pollsters are themselves asking over and over this year. \u00a0In between, was this pollster\u2019s reply. \u00a0People aren\u2019t as fired up as they were two years ago, but the dissatisfaction with President Obama hasn\u2019t changed.<\/p>\n
A little earlier, I talked with two shrewd Washington pros, one among the town\u2019s most prominent conservative journalists.<\/p>\n
Did you know that the Democrats lost the women\u2019s vote in the 2010 mid-term elections, one asked me? No, I didn\u2019t. \u00a0Well, they did, for the first time in decades, which is why they have concocted the \u201cRepublican War on Women\u201d theme, this pundit said. They can\u2019t win if they don\u2019t get women back.<\/p>\n
Later, a well-known fundraiser for conservative institutions suggested that the War on Women charges were backfiring on the president. \u00a0He has been looking nasty, mean, small-minded, she observed. \u00a0People don\u2019t like that, and they are liking him less and less.<\/p>\n
The pollster anticipated a close race. \u00a0The fundraiser predicted a Romney landslide. \u00a0The journalist wasn\u2019t saying.<\/p>\n
The second gathering was a fundraiser for Mitt Romney. \u00a0It was held in Northern Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington a week ago. \u00a0It was the first time I had actually seen the candidate in person.<\/p>\n
Romney is a bigger man — taller, more powerfully built — than I had thought from his pictures. Heavy boned, broad shoulders \u2013 you sense the pioneer generation in his physical presence.<\/p>\n
He got a pumped up introduction of the \u201cHeeeeeeeeeeeeeere\u2019s Johnny\u201d variety, ran into the room from a side door, beaming, pumped hands still on the run, before jumping to the stage. \u00a0Game show host\u2019s entrance, I thought.<\/p>\n
It took him a few minutes to settle into his speech, and he repeated \u201cI love this country\u201d a lot of times before he did.<\/p>\n
But once he was into his talk, I started to think, for this time and this candidate, this message sounds right. \u00a0He told a number of stories about people he had met campaigning, ordinary people and mostly men and women who had started smaller companies. \u00a0No NASCAR team owners that I could tell. \u00a0Through the stories, he showed how the nation\u2019s acknowledged job creators saw our economic problems and pointed to solutions.<\/p>\n
He also got off some good lines, including that the president, in saying of energy that he favors \u201call of the above\u201d even as he blocks oil and gas exploration, must mean that he favors only energy sources that are entirely above the ground \u2013 wind, solar. \u00a0It was funny, at least when he told it. \u00a0And it had, as they say, the added advantage of truth.<\/p>\n
By the end of speech, I felt that, if I were a swing voter, Romney would have had my head. \u00a0Not my heart. \u00a0I didn\u2019t feel an emotional lift. \u00a0But my head? \u00a0Absolutely.<\/p>\n
The final evening was The New Criterion<\/em> dinner in New York, two weeks ago. \u00a0The New Criterion<\/em> is a conservative magazine that focuses on the culture. \u00a0The founding editor, the celebrated critic Hilton Kramer, recently passed away, a true loss. \u00a0The current editor — the brilliant, inventive and prolific Roger Kimball \u2013 presided. \u00a0Henry Kissinger spoke.<\/p>\n Kissinger said that the nation has no global strategy today. \u00a0We had a global strategy under Richard Nixon, he said, because the president had spent his entire career thinking about and developing his approach to international affairs. \u00a0We also had it under Ronald Reagan, because President Reagan\u2019s principles precisely fit the needs of the times. \u00a0But we do not now.<\/p>\n It reminded me of overseas conferences I have attended and reported on in this column \u2013 the anxiety I have encountered since the current administration took office that the United States was receding from its role as the global center of gravity. \u00a0And I remembered the strongly favorable response to Romney that I have been told critical allies have had.<\/p>\n So this is where we are, half a year before the election — national leadership adrift, voters looking over the alternative. \u00a0They don\u2019t like whom they have. \u00a0They are liking the alternative more and more. \u00a0But they have not yet made up their minds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here are three scenes from three recent evenings that to me told volumes about the state of this year\u2019s presidential campaign. The first was last night — a gathering of Washington conservatives. \u00a0At the reception before the dinner, I questioned a number of pollsters and pundits about the shape of the race. The daily Rasmussen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[42,12],"class_list":["post-1208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicalcommentary-campaign-2012","tag-2012-election","tag-hugh-hewitt"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1208"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1391,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208\/revisions\/1391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}