Are Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney Too Managerial?

The Wall Street Journal has an article out about how Mitt Romney's campaign is being run by himself and his business partners. It is quite interesting. It points out that good and the bad aspects of such an approach. This is the opening paragraphs of the article:

MERRIMACK, N.H. -- To get a feel for why Mitt Romney took a drubbing in Iowa Thursday night, consider the reception he got from a little girl in the next battleground state, New Hampshire.

At a recent "Ask Mitt Anything" night here, a nine-year-old girl asked the Republican candidate what is the first thing he will do as president. "I will build the right team," Mr. Romney replied matter-of-factly. "I tend to be a person driven by data and analysis, not just what's political."

The girl looked at him blankly.

Note that there is no emotion in that answer and no passion. The article goes on to talk about Romney's reaction to the Bhutto assassination in Pakistan:

But his analytical approach isn't always what's needed on the campaign trail. Last week, when camera crews surrounded Mr. Romney for instant comments on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, he ducked into the kitchen of a diner to strategize quickly with his team. After being briefed on the event, he emerged outside the dinner where a crowd had gathered. "This points out again the extraordinary reality of global, violent, radical jihadism," he said.

"I didn't hear him say anything about how sad her death is," one bystander grumbled later. Mr. Romney corrected that omission at the next public event.

In a way, Hillary Clinton and Romney have the same problem. One of the biggest complaints that voters have about Clinton is that she is "too programmed", and seems to lack authenticity. Both of them are acting as if voters make rational decisions, not emotional decisions.

Mark Shields, the liberal news commentator who appears on Jim Lehrer's News Hour, once said that voting for president is the most emotional vote that Americans cast. Americans want to feel connected to their leaders. They want to feel that their leaders understand their problems. Such feelings are not cultivated by a managerial approach to politics.

Contrast the Romney/Clinton style to the Huckabee/Obama style, which is much more emotional. Huckabee and Obama seem to emotionally connect to their supporters. They seem to be making people who perceive themselves as powerless, evangelicals and young people, feel powerful. They are, in a lot of ways, the stylistic opposites of Romney and Clinton.

Interestingly, John McCain, who is Romney's chief rival in New Hampshire, is also a politician who seems to connect emotionally to his supporters. For that matter, so does John Edwards. It will be very interesting to see what happens to Romney and Clinton if it gets down to a two person race. One that pits each of them against just one opponent who is high in emotional i.q.