On Romney's $10,000 Bet

Yeah, that ain't good for him.

There is something in the human brain that craves structure.  It's why we look at the billowing clouds of the towers on 9/11 and see Satan's face or Jesus's face on a waffle.  It's why we create stories like the Kennedy assassination conspiracies or Area 51.

We need story to make sense of a patternless world.

And Romney's story increasingly is a sucky one.  He's the rich kid who expects things to be given to him.  He gets petulant when challenged, even by Fox News.  He's Pete Du Pont or Steve Forbes with better hair and a killer jawline.

And while the "establishment" can overlook this, voters can't.

When I talk to young teachers, I tell them that there is no substitute in the classroom for authenticity.  You have to create a classroom persona that is authentic to you.  You are a performer, but it has to be a genuine performance.

Politics is the same way.  And Romney's persona is stuck to him.  His efforts to change that only make him look inauthentic.

Nobody bets $10,000.  You either bet $10 or you bet $10,000,000 in that situation.  Either of those and what you're really saying is, "Put your money where your mouth is."  But $10,000 from a guy who spends that much on his hair suggests that he really wanted to make a bet for that amount.  Now of course he's a Mormon and doesn't gamble, so his defense was that he made up a number that sounded large.  But $10,000 is an amount that a rich person thinks a middle class person thinks is a big number.  It manages to show him as both a rich, privileged prig and a patronizing prick.

Well played, Willard.

Romney 2012 = Giuliani 2008.