Sunday, September 16, 2012

Woe Is Willard: Fritterin' Edition

By Sniffles

We cats understand that we cut our teeth on campaigning many feline lives ago. When we were kittens, there were only three TV networks, cable was in its infancy, there were lots of newspapers that employed actual grownups who knew how to write, and only a few geeks in the Department of Defense knew about what Ted Stevens eventually called the series of tubes.

Which means that campaigns were different then, too. Nevertheless, even in this newfangled day and age of Two Thousand And Twelve, we are astounded that, less than eight weeks before Election Day, Willard Mitt Romney spent yesterday goofing around with his family in Massachusetts.

The GOP nominee, behind in the polls, hung out at his son "Tagg's" house, attended a grandson's soccer game, and went out to dinner with his wife. All in a state he's probably going to lose by double digits. We guess he feels no sense of urgency about the campaign.

Now, we realize times have changed. There's the Internet thing, and e-mail, and all that social media stuff to help put a candidate on people's laptops and tablets and phones and other devices. And there's advertising to be had on a zillion cable channels. But goodness gracious, why isn't this man out campaigning?

He and his running mate and their respective spouses could hit four or five battleground media markets every day, kissing babies, thanking volunteers, pressing the flesh and getting free media by giving interviews to local TV. (After all, you can only run so many Super PAC commercials. Pretty soon they're going to run out of ad slots to buy, and then what will they do? Advertise on BET?)

We cats almost feel bad for Willard's campaign staff. Because you could possibly maybe kinda excuse this behavior if the Romneybots, as has been observed of the Obama operation, had mastered a fabulous, highly branded 21st-century campaign efficient enough to give the candidate some leeway on his schedule. But we've seen no evidence that they have, have you? We guess Romney just figures that he's entitled to the Presidency — that Obama isn't — and that, between now and November, American voters will realize that.

In the words of Meredith Willson, Willard is "fritterin' away his noontime, suppertime, chore time, too." We cats PURR.

(PHOTO: AP. The ultimate fritterin' picture.)

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