Romney’s Throwback Language, His Mittisms

Richard Perry/The New York Times

Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, left, made cherry pies with Linda Hundt, the owner of Sweetie-licious Bakery Cafe in DeWitt, Mich., during a campaign stop in June.

GOFFSTOWN, N.H. — At a campaign stop in Rockford, Ill., not long ago, Mitt Romney sought to convey his feelings for his wife, Ann. "Smitten," he said.

Not merely in love.

"Yeah, smitten," he said. "Mitt was smitten."

It was a classic Mittism, as friends and advisers call the verbal quirks of the Republican presidential candidate. In Romneyspeak, passengers do not get off airplanes, they "disembark." People do not laugh, they "guffaw." Criminals do not go to jail, they land in the "big house." Insults are not hurled, "brickbats" are.

As he seeks the office of commander in chief, Mr. Romney can sometimes seem like an editor in chief, employing a language all his own. It is polite, formal and at times anachronistic, linguistically setting apart a man who frequently struggles to sell himself to the American electorate.

It is most pronounced when he is on the stump and off the cuff, not on the stuffy and rehearsed debate stage. But Mr. Romney offered voters a dose of it during his face-off with President Obama last week, when he coined the infelicitous phrase "binders full of women."

Mr. Romney's unique style of speaking has distinguished him throughout his career, influencing the word choices of those who work with and especially for him. Should he reach the White House, friends and advisers concede, the trait could be a defining feature of his public image, as memorable as Lyndon B. Johnson's foul-mouthed utterances or the first President Bush's tortured syntax.

Mr. Romney, 65, has spent four decades inside the corridors of high finance and state politics, where indecorous diction and vulgarisms abound. But he has emerged as if in a rhetorical time capsule from a well-mannered era of soda fountains and AMC Ramblers, someone whose idea of swearing is to let loose with the phrase "H-E-double hockey sticks."

"He actually said that," recalled Thomas Finneran, the speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives when Mr. Romney was governor. "As in, go to 'H-E-double hockey sticks.' I would think to myself, 'Who talks like that?' "

Mr. Romney, quite proudly. In fact, he seems puzzled by the fascination with something as instinctive (and immutable) as how he talks, as if somebody were asking how he breathes. "It's like someone who speaks with an accent," he said in an interview. "You don't hear the accent."

His Mormon faith frowns on salty language, and so does he. A man of relentless self-discipline, he made clear to lawmakers in Boston and colleagues in business that even in matters of vocabulary, he "held himself to a high standard of behavior," said Geoffrey Rehnert, a former executive at Bain Capital, the firm Mr. Romney started in the 1980s. Mr. Romney's father, George, whom he idolized, shared the same style of refined and restrained speech.

Those around him are so accustomed to his verbal tics that they describe them in shorthand. "Old-timey," said one aide. "His 1950s language," explained another. "The Gomer Pyle routine," said a third.

Asked about his boss's word preferences, Eric Fehrnstrom, a veteran Romney adviser, responded knowingly: "You mean like 'gosh, golly, darn'?"

For Democratic strategists, Mr. Romney's throwback vocabulary feeds into their portrayal of a man ill-equipped for the mores and challenges of the modern age. David Axelrod, a top adviser for an Obama campaign that has adopted "Forward" as its slogan, once quipped that Mr. Romney "must watch 'Mad Men,' " the hit television show set in Manhattan in the 1960s, "and think it's the evening news."

His exclamations can sound jarring to the contemporary ear — or charming, depending on whom you ask. Midway into a critique of Mr. Obama's economic policies a few months ago, Mr. Romney declared: "They've scared the dickens out of banks," he said. "They've scared the dickens out of insurance companies."

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 20, 2012

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misstated the location and date of a campaign stop by Mitt Romney. He was in DeWitt, Mich., in June, not in Virginia this month.

Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Romney’s Throwback Language, His Mittisms

Dengan url

https://dunialuasekali.blogspot.com/2012/10/romneyas-throwback-language-his-mittisms.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Romney’s Throwback Language, His Mittisms

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Romney’s Throwback Language, His Mittisms

sebagai sumbernya