(Reuters) – Mitt Romney, stiff?
“He’s not. He’s funny,” Ann
Romney, the Republican presidential candidate’s wife, told “CBS This Morning” on Tuesday, defending her husband against
public perceptions that he is inaccessible and has a “likeability gap” with voters.
with his wife Ann after his speech at a primary night rally in Manchester, New Hampshire April 24, 2012. REUTERS/Dominick
Reuter
“I still look at him as this is the boy that I met, in high school, when he was pulling all the
jokes, and really just being crazy. Pretty crazy. So there’s a wild and crazy man inside of him … just waiting to come
out.”
Romney is a multimillionaire businessman whose gaffes on the campaign trail have created an image of the
candidate as rich, stiff and out of touch with the average American.
It is a perception that has dogged the former
Massachusetts governor throughout the Republican presidential primary and is not likely to evaporate as he faces Democratic
President Barack Obama in the November election.
A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that 56 percent of
respondents said they had a favorable picture of Obama, while only 35 percent said the same of Romney.
Ann Romney says
it is a myth of her husband that she looks forward to debunking.
“I think in politics that this is what always happens
is that there’s a narrative and sometimes you like to put someone in a box and keep them in that box,” she said as the
couple appeared together in the CBS interview.
Asked how this personability factor would affect voters in November,
Mitt Romney steered the discourse to more comfortable territory.
“The people of this country in my view will vote on
the issue they care about most and I believe the president will do everything in his power to try and deflect from that
central issue: which is, ‘Has he made the economy work for the American people?'” he said.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Jackie Frank)