Opinion: What’s this? An unexpected forum question?
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The small audiences that presidential candidates encounter on the campaign trail in New Hampshire are mostly friendly and intimate. When the candidates do a Q&A-type town hall meeting, the Q’s usually play right into the candidate’s talking points. It’s a technique perfected by President Bush and, in this election cycle, Hillary Clinton.
But, occasionally, someone in the audience violates the rules, sending campaign aides into head-shaking mode because unexpected turns violate their event game plan.
Friday night, as a Times staffer watched, Mitt Romney got one of those questions in the American Legion Hall in Rochester, N.H. It came from the middle of an audience so friendly that one member had Mitt’s name sewn onto the back of his sweatshirt.
Having lauded Bush’s tax cuts as a ‘courageous thing’ and ‘a great thing for our country,’ Romney was asked by one man why he had refused to endorse the tax cuts when Bush first proposed them. Wasn’t that being hypocritical? the questioner wanted to know.
No, replied Romney, stumbling briefly. What he had said back then, the former governor said, was ‘Look, I’m busy being governor ... and I’m not weighing in on federal issues.’ Recovering rhetorically, Romney added: ‘Sen. McCain is different. He voted against the tax cuts twice. I was governor of a state, not a senator.’
The questioner, identifying himself later only as ‘Sam,’ was surrounded later by tsk-tsking Romney aides, who accused him of being a plant from the McCain campaign. Gee, who would suspect such antics could happen among grown-up campaigns competing to lead the entire country?
--Andrew Malcolm