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" (Optional soundtrack to this blog post...)       TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Not long before Willard Romney became the presidential nominee of the Republican Party at its convention here on Thursday night, I was standing around the Massachusetts delegation, which, because Romney once had lowered himself to be the governor of the Commonwealth (God save it!), had primo sight-lines down and to stage right and immediately below the podium. I spent a little time getting heckled by some old friends of mine from up at the State House and then, right by the standard, I saw a shock of reddish hair, and the sleepy-eyed, bemused grin of a man who long ago determined that life was given to him pretty much for his own amusement. Two decades ago, William Weld could have been Mitt Romney. He was a Republican governor who got things done in liberal Massachusetts. He even had some things going for him that Romney never has had. He made his name prosecuting political corruption, running to earth some of the slower moving fauna in our distinctive political jungle. He also was avuncular in that wonderful way of all our honorary WASP uncles, ready to mix it up in a saloon, a glass of what he came to call &amp;quot;the amber-colored liquid&amp;quot; in his hand. But then he lost a tough and brilliant senatorial race to John Kerry, and his life went off the rails for a while, but he&amp;#039;s back practicing law again, and he was here on Thursday night, grinning that lopsided grin and damned happy to see you. He was what Massachusetts Republicans used to be; old-line Yankees who found in themselves a mysterious talent for Irish political bonhomie. That&amp;#039;s who they were before the Republicans handed their party over to new-money ice sculptures like Willard Romney. Weld can quote lines of mine from 30 years ago that he loved. I like William Weld a great deal. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll tell you,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;They can make this 1980. If they can get enough people to change what boxes they mark, I think they can win this thing on the economy. I truly do.&amp;quot; There was a lot of that here on Thursday night. There was a lot of trying to make Barack Obama into Jimmy Carter, and, by proxy, Willard Romney into Ronald Reagan. Newt Gingrich was forced into the televised equivalent of a Soviet show trial, made to share a stage with his wife and read a prepared text comparing Romney to Reagan, which must have caused Newt&amp;#039;s gall-bladder to perform backflips. (What this party did to him on Thursday night is a crime against political humanity. A Republican party without Newt Gingrich in full cry is a lesser institution indeed.) Romney himself took a shot at poor Carter in the middle of his speech. But, on a personal level, the level on which the entire evening tried to sell its new presidential candidate, Weld was a lot closer to Reagan than Romney ever will be. Romney is the candidate William Weld could never be, but Weld is the human being Willard Romney is trying to manufacture out of himself. I have to give the man credit. Romney on Thursday night came as close as he ever has in his political career to being thoroughly human. He worked so damned hard at being empathetic that, even if I didn&amp;#039;t buy a word of it, the sweat equity was positively profound. Really, at times, he looked like a guy trying to push a truck up a hill. My favorite section was a long passage, presented, strangely enough, to an audience that&amp;#039;s going to go home and vote for more guns on the border, that we might call The Immigrant Song of Willard Romney: My dad had been born in Mexico and his family had to leave during the Mexican revolution. I grew up with stories of his family being fed by the U.S. Government as war refugees. My dad never made it through college and apprenticed as a lath and plaster carpenter. And he had big dreams. He convinced my mom, a beautiful young actress, to give up Hollywood to marry him. He moved to Detroit, led a great automobile company and became Governor of the Great State of Michigan. (Wait. &amp;quot;Fed by the U.S. government as war refugees&amp;quot;? Your father might have died of starvation before he ever saw a lathe but for the intervention of The Government? Altogether now, &amp;quot;You didn&amp;#039;t build that!&amp;quot;) I have to admit that I, a son of the Commonwealth and grandson of a shepherd lass from the hills of north Kerry, never looked at Willard Romney and his perfect wife and his perfect children and thought to myself that we shared a common experience as the descendants of emigres. I have to admit that I don&amp;#039;t look at him and think anything of that sort now, either. But, by god, he made a real stab at it, and I had to respect the effort, and the raw chutzpah, if nothing else. (This is tonight&amp;#039;s quiz, in the category &amp;quot;America Is a Nation of Immigrants&amp;quot;: George Romney rose in one lifetime from abject poverty to become governor of Michigan and an auto millionnaire. Marco Rubio&amp;#039;s father lived and died a ballroom bartender. Compare and contrast.&amp;quot;) Romney also came just inches from actually inhabiting the role of a child of immigrants \u2014 Mitt Freaking Romney, who looks like his family immigrated from Mattel \u2014 and I didn&amp;#039;t think he had that in him.  I think that, somewhere along the trail, it occurred to him that, really, all he was doing was conducting another sale, and that, if there was one thing he can do, it&amp;#039;s that he can sell. And he has learned very well how to sell an indictment of this administration that is not going to be as easy to parry as this president&amp;#039;s people seem to think it&amp;#039;s going to be. It is not what we were promised. Every family in America wanted this to be a time when they could get ahead a little more, put aside a little more for college, do more for their elderly mom who&amp;#039;s living alone now or give a little more to their church or charity. Every small business wanted these to be their best years ever, when they could hire more, do more for those who had stuck with them through the hard times, open a new store or sponsor that Little League team. Every new college graduate thought they&amp;#039;d have a good job by now, a place of their own, and that they could start paying back some of their loans and build for the future. This is when our nation was supposed to start paying down the national debt and rolling back those massive deficits. This was the hope and change America voted for. It&amp;#039;s not just what we wanted. It&amp;#039;s not just what we expected. It&amp;#039;s what Americans deserved. You deserved it because during these years, you worked harder than ever before. You deserved it because when it cost more to fill up your car, you cut out movie nights and put in longer hours. Or when you lost that job that paid $22.50 an hour with benefits, you took two jobs at 9 bucks an hour and fewer benefits. You did it because your family depended on you. You did it because you&amp;#039;re an American and you don&amp;#039;t quit. You did it because it was what you had to do. But driving home late from that second job, or standing there watching the gas pump hit 50 dollars and still going, when the realtor told you that to sell your house you&amp;#039;d have to take a big loss, in those moments you knew that this just wasn&amp;#039;t right. But what could you do? Except work harder, do with less, try to stay optimistic. Hug your kids a little longer; maybe spend a little more time praying that tomorrow would be a better day. I wish President Obama had succeeded because I want America to succeed. But his promises gave way to disappointment and division. This isn&amp;#039;t something we have to accept. Now is the moment when we CAN do something. With your help we will do something. Now is the moment when we can stand up and say, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m an American. I make my destiny. And we deserve better! My children deserve better! My family deserves better. My country deserves better!&amp;quot; He&amp;#039;s trying for the Reagan moment right there, and it&amp;#039;s not really all that far out of his reach. Ultimately, I think the entire election depends on which part of the now utterly kaleidoscopic Romney political persona the country&amp;#039;s eyes finally light upon at the end of things. Is it that guy, or is it the pandering fool who was going to arm-wrestle Vladimir Putin, blow the hell out of Iran, kick the Chinese in the balls, and who on Thursday night eventually blew through one of the strangest passages of political rhetoric these ears ever have heard. President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise... is to help you and your family. You can&amp;#039;t realize the truly bizarre nature of it unless you break it up into the way it sounded in real time on the convention floor, with the appropriate audience reactions. President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans... (Boooooo!!!!!!!! Awwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Guffaw! Howl!) ...and heal the planet. (BOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! AWWWWWWW!!!!!!! GUFFAW! HOWWWWLLLL!) My promise... is to help you and your family. (Wild, unbridled applause.) I&amp;#039;m sure that some genius speechwriter was tremendously proud of this line, but all he did was make his candidate sound like he was throwing a bone to global-warming denialists. (Suppose &amp;quot;you and your family&amp;quot; live on, say, Cape Hatteras, or on a barrier island in Alaska? You&amp;#039;re pretty much screwed, Ace.) And the crowd reaction, which I refuse to believe was in any way anticipated, made the entire assembled Republican Party sound like the kind of anti-science know-nothings that they spent the entire week here trying to pretend they weren&amp;#039;t. I have no idea where he was trying to go with this, but it was the most genuinely robotic moment of the evening, and that&amp;#039;s not what they were shooting for with the entire program. (And then the little voice in my head chimed in: &amp;quot;AND THE STATE OF LOUISIANA IS UNDERWATER RIGHT NOW, YOU FKING ASSHOLES!!!!! I have to learn to ignore the little voice in my head.) What they were shooting for on Thursday night was an extended exercise in Pinocchio, You&amp;#039;re a Real Boy Now. The speakers were an unwieldy amalgam of people whose lives Mitt had touched, from a fellow Mormon cleric, to some people to whom Romney had done acts of genuine charity, to a whole passel of Olympians who seemed to be telling us that Romney saved the Olympics to help us heal from 9/11. (Note to Mike Eruzione: I was never more of a Vladislav Tretiak fan than I was on Thursday night.) They even brought out Kerry Murphy Healey, the colleen from the horse country of Essex County who was his lieutenant-governor, to talk about how Romney was able to reach across party lines and get things done. And that was when, as a son of the Commonwealth, I decided that the Romney in whom I would believe is the one who has spent three years running away from the thing he&amp;#039;s accomplished that has done the most good for the most people. I was moved by the couple for whose dying son Romney wrote a will. I was moved by the woman whom the Romney&amp;#039;s helped through a difficult childbirth. Wasn&amp;#039;t there room for one family from Massachusetts who could have come out on the stage and explained how much easier their lives have been since Governor Romney worked with the Democrats in the legislature to pass comprehensive health-care reform? When Healey talked about his gift for compromise and bipartisanship \u2014 which were largely illusory, especially when he stopped giving a fk about being governor \u2014 couldn&amp;#039;t she have spared a mention for the most monumental achievement that gift produced? Couldn&amp;#039;t Jane Edmonds have mentioned how hard his cabinet worked to make sure that we would have the system we have today, with 93 percent of the people in Massachusetts, and almost all the children, covered by health insurance? What do you make of a man who runs away from the good he&amp;#039;s done, who won&amp;#039;t let the people who most benefitted from his presence in our politics share his finest hour? This is not a mistake Bill Weld would have made, because he is the person Willard Romney is trying to manufacture out of himself. This is the Willard Romney in whom I choose to believe. A man who will bring &amp;quot;backbone&amp;quot; to our dealings with Russia, but who can be talked out of his justifiable pride in his greatest accomplishment because his party has lost its mind on the subject. But that&amp;#039;s just me, and I&amp;#039;m one guy, and something of a provincial at that. On Thursday night, Willard Romney may have come as close to humanity as he needs to come. The rest is all just waiting for him out there \u2014 8-percent unemployment, and a Democratic Party that may well spend a week talking about how much they&amp;#039;re willing to cut and how serious they are about The Deficit. I felt a pulse on Thursday night, and I saw a certain vigorous color come to his cheeks. I think Romney&amp;#039;s alive now, and it bothers me, because I think he&amp;#039;s a lot closer to becoming president than he was at the beginning of the night. MORE FROM THURSDAY NIGHT: Mark Warren on Marco Rubio and John H. Richardson on Newt Gingrich CATCH UP ON ALL THE POLITICS BLOG&amp;#039;S COVERAGE FROM TAMPA AND STAY TUNED FOR MORE FROM CHARLOTTE &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a15595/mitt-romney-convention-speech-12220378/>