If you are a Mitt Romney supporter, you have likely said to yourself one of the following sometime in the last six months: "If only he didn't put his foot in his mouth so often," or "If only he didn't commit so many gaffes." Perhaps you wish he were better with the press or could communicate in a more human way, then he would make a great president.
This is akin to saying, "If only he were better at cutting down trees, then he'd make a real fine lumber jack."
Perhaps this exaggerates the case slightly, but there is no denying that not making errors and communicating effectively with the press is an important part of being president. In fact, it is crucial.
This is not immediately obvious. What is so bad about Romney saying that he likes being able to fire people who work for him, or explaining that he could not have an illegal immigrant clean his house because he was "running for office, for Pete's sake?" How about when he let a story about his family dog's car-roof kennel spiral out of control that it consumed an entire news cycle? Honestly, what's the problem? None of these examples really have anything to do with his policies or his stance on any important issues. So what if he is not exactly suave? So what if he miscalculates constantly? What's the big deal?
Well, in politics, being charming is a big part of the game and contrary to popular belief, the president should be a good politician. That does not mean that he should be a used car salesman, constantly pulling the wool over the country's eyes. For better or for worse, the president has a very political job, and he should be good at it. He should be able to propose a piece of legislation and have it pass through Congress. He should be able to control a news cycle and use it to his advantage. He should be able to represent the nation competently to foreign heads of state and give press conferences that rally his base and garner support for a policy — anything which makes his already Herculean task of running the country easier, not harder. Of course this kind of finesse, guile, cunning and political skill needs to develop from genuinely held beliefs and strong convictions. It does not, however, matter how noble the cause is or how pure one's heart is. A lousy politician will be an ineffective president.
This is not to say that a president can never make mistakes. Individually, any one gaffe is trivial. But as a part of a trend, such mistakes can mire a presidency in scandal and force the administration to spend more time on damage control and less on governance. This is the very definition of a waste of the president's and the country's time.
What should concern people most about Romney's perpetual foot-in-mouth is not any particular slip he makes (unless of course it really does bother you that he keeps his dog on the roof of his car), but that he keeps making them. It is problematic that political headlines for the next four years will not be about the issues — both good and bad — that the president has done, but rather the stupid things that the president has said.
