Mitt Romney, human being?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

"Mitt Romney begins humanizing campaign," reports Politico, not without a certain sardonic glee:

Meet Mitt Romney, human.

In the past 24 hours, the former Massachusetts governor has talked about his father, experiences while working as a missionary that weren’t even in his memoir — and twice in two days, he's brought up the Mormon faith that he's until now largely steered clear of.

For a candidate who's developed a reputation for stiffness after years spent focusing on his professional background and business expertise, it's a sizable rhetorical pivot — and one that coincided with a renewed effort by his GOP rivals and Democrats to make an issue of his personal wealth following the the awkward $10,000 bet he offered Rick Perry during Saturday night's debate.

Rushing to fend off the sudden strength of Newt Gingrich — a candidate who usually avoids delving into his own personal story, and has vulnerabilities there because of his two divorces — Romney has engaged in a humanizing effort. He's casting himself as more personable, connecting with the economic struggles of the voters despite his own multimillion-dollar fortune, and even taking a new route to talking about American exceptionalism.

Not. Gonna. Work.

First, he's more than enough cyborg to make John Connor uneasy. Showing a human side won't be enough to prove his humanity.

Second, he has absolutely zero credibility in terms of both personal and political authenticity, particularly with conservatives. Everyone knows he's a shameless opportunist willing to flip and flop and sell his integrity, such as he has any, for votes. Presenting himself, or rather selling himself, as not just a human being but as a regular guy will just come across as yet more pandering, as yet another act. Even if there's some authenticity behind it all, even if there's a real Mitt who isn't just an ambitious cyborg, he'll never be able to overcome the reputation of phoniness that precedes him.

Third, he isn't a regular guy. He's an extremely wealthy plutocrat who made his money buying companies and cutting jobs, and he's basically been trying to be a career politician the past 20 years, usually without success.

Remember how Al Gore was contrasted as the patrician next to the supposedly plebeian George W. Bush in 2000? Bush cultivated that regular guy image despite being anything but, and he was able to get away with it because he was a simpleton (and because the media played right along), while Gore was seen as out of touch and unable to connect to regular folk (with the Bush-friendly media playing that mischaracterization up as well, never allowing Gore to be anything but what they falsely imagined him to be). Well, Gore did come across as something other than a regular buy, mainly because he was smart and worldly, and he was never really able to connect no matter how much plaid he wore or how many pickup trucks he jumped in the back of. Same with Kerry in 2004, another smart and worldly guy who had trouble connecting (again, because the media played up the Bush-friendly narrative). But if it was bad for Gore and Kerry, it's much worse for Romney. Even his own party doesn't believe him.

Simply put, even this effort to humanize himself seems like a calculated move. Because it is.

It's just Romney being Romney. And we've all had more than enough of that.