Mitt Romney‘s campaign is starting to kick in high gear, particularly on the front of making their candidate more personable. To than end, the campaign has been putting several mini-campaign videos on their websites of Romney on the road, with some perhaps unintended hilarity resulting. Take this clip, for example– a very short clip of Romney eating pancakes, explaining that he is eating pancakes, explaining the “play on words” of the restaurant’s name, and where he’s off to from here.
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The pancakes, Romney notes, are from Rosemont, Illinois’ “Pancakes Eggscetera. “It’s like kind of a play on words,” he says, in case you miss the pun. “The pancakes are apparently very good.” That’s what transpires here, for most of the video:
The great thing about this video is that, because there is food and it is a one-on-one conversation, it gives one the sense that this is what Romney would be like on a date, or at a dinner. Surely the camera changes that a lot, as does the campaign trail, but in a world where “guy you can have a beer with” got a President elected– twice!– the “sitcom dad” appeal of the video carries all that much more resonance.
David Graham at The Atlantic does a good job of explaining why this short, sweet, and abrasively boring look into being Mitt Romney is so compelling, no matter how hard it tries not to be:
First, they’re “apparently” good? You’re eating them! Even better is the fact that he is that guy who explains jokes, and he does so totally deadpan. As Molly Ball has established, Romney is actually a pretty hilarious guy, but it’s not hard to see why conventional wisdom has tended to be the opposite. Rather than a peek inside Mitt the man, we get a catalog of banal moments in the long slog toward Tampa. On the other hand, the world does finally know what the notoriously self-controlled Romney cannot resist. To wit: Little-Debbie style cupcakes.
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