Mitt Romney's remark about women during the second presidential debate was a gift to the internet. Picture: Supplied Source: Supplied
THIS should have been a walk in the park for Mitt Romney.
Barack Obama's approval rating was below 50 per cent, more and more Americans believed he was pushing the country down the wrong path and - crucially - the unemployment rate was a frightening 8 per cent throughout most of his presidency.
The last president to get re-elected on worse job figures was Franklin Roosevelt; history and the economy were against Obama.
Yet, Romney never managed to deliver the killer blow. Obama was still in the game throughout the entire campaign, and despite hysterical Republican calls to the contrary, the momentum was with him, not Romney.
Here's how Romney blew it:
1. Say anything
Romney looks like a movie president: chiselled good looks, dazzling white teeth and perfectly coiffed hair. He's just the sort of candidate you'd expect on the Republican ticket but the GOP hummed and hawed about Romney throughout the primaries. Party members flirted with a pretty strange and unelectable bunch - Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum and Herman Cain - before settling on Romney. But to get the party's seal of approval, Romney, who had been a moderate while governor of Massachusetts, had to shift ever more to the right and ditch everything that would make him appealing to independent voters. He suddenly became the Etch-a-Sketch candidate who would do or say anything to get elected.
2. $10,000 bet
Romney is rich, richer than a lot of rich Americans, so even before the White House race started, he should have known his wealth was going to be a problem. Obama's strategy was to show Romney to be an out-of-touch plutocrat, a predatory capitalist who didn't care about the struggles of ordinary Americans. Romney should have worked hard to avoid this but he let it become an issue when he bet rival Republican candidate Rick Perry $10,000 over a disagreement over healthcare. Romney's team insisted the bet was a joke but it seemed the kind of flippant remark that spoke heaps about Romney's attitude to money. In the same category was comment that he liked firing people.
3. Taxing issue
Throughout the campaign Democrats called into question Romney's tax affairs, with some claiming that the multi-millionaire had avoided paying the correct amount. Romney repeatedly refused demands to publish his tax returns and the issue dragged on and on, making it look like he had something to hide. He didn't acquiesce until quite late in the day, and although the returns showed he paid no less than he was required, they did remind voters of the huge amounts he had in his bank accounts.
4. Golden gaffe
When you manage to upset America's closest ally, you know you have a gaffe problem. Romney questioned London's ability to host the Games while on a trip to the UK, telling NBC that issues surrounding Olympic security were "disconcerting". Britain's tabloids dubbed Romney "Mitt the Twit" and Prime Minister David Cameron noted that it was more difficult to organise Olympic Games in one of the busiest capital cities in the world than in the "middle of nowhere", a reference to the Salt Lake City Games Romney organised.
5. Clint Eastwood v empty chair
Getting Dirty Harry to endorse him at the Republican National Convention should have been Romney's chance to stick it to left-leaning Hollywood and show America he had a legend on his side. But Eastwood's address made the headlines for all the wrong reasons and gave stand-ups the kind of material they dream of.
6. 47 per cent
This was the defining moment of the campaign: Romney managing to dismiss half of American voters as worthless scroungers. A secret recording of a Republican fundraiser leaked to the media in September has Romney describing non-taxpaying dependents as people who would never vote Republican because they would not "take responsibility for their own lives". "Forty seven per cent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what." He also managed to offend Palestinians and Latinos in the same speech and it shows just how dissatisfied voters were with Obama that Romney managed to claw back in the polls.
7. Benghazi
The attack on the US embassy in Benghazi on September 11 and the deaths of the US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three others should have given Romney the chance to skewer Obama on security. Romney criticised the White House for not properly recognising the threat in the region but his attack, just hours after the deaths, seemed opportunistic and un-presidential. Although he was right to highlight the failure of the Obama administration to be straight on the issue, Democrats were able to paint him as a candidate who was "working hard to exploit" American deaths.
8. Binders full of women
Romney was ahead. Obama had stuffed up the first debate and for the first time Romney didn't look like a crazy guy who would take America over the edge. He seemed like a moderate Republican, the sort of politician he had been when he was in office. Obama was a disaster and had looked half asleep. All Romney had to do was avoid saying anything controversial and he would be home free. But then he went and coined one of the best phrases of the campaign: "Binders full of women." The comment, made while Romney was trying to show he furthered women's careers while he was governor, made him look like a reactionary Republican who lived in the 1950s.
9. Sandy, Mike and Chris
All campaigns are hostage to freak events and Sandy was the biggest freak event of them all, ripping the eastern seaboard to shreds, killing 110 people and leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power or clean water. It stopped any momentum Romney had been building and showed Obama at his best - as a president who could quietly get things done and hold the nation together. But superstorm Sandy battered Romney in other ways. It brought the little-discussed issue of climate change to the fore and Romney's current position did him no favours. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a former Republican, endorsed Obama because Romney had flip-flopped on the environment:
"Mitt Romney has reversed course, abandoning the very cap-and-trade program he once supported. This issue is too important. We need determined leadership at the national level to move the nation and the world forward.
"I believe Mitt Romney is a good and decent man, and he would bring valuable business experience to the Oval Office. He understands that America was built on the promise of equal opportunity, not equal results. In the past he has also taken sensible positions on immigration, illegal guns, abortion rights, and health care. But he has reversed course on all of them, and is even running against the health-care model he signed into law in Massachusetts."
Hurting Romney further was the praise Republican Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie was heaping on the president for his actions during the hurricane. Photos of the two together, shaking hands and smiling, were a gentle reminder that Obama was a man the Republicans could do business with.
