Why did Mitt Romney cancel appearance on 'The View'?

Mitt Romney has shown he can handle a tough televised situation: Remember the debate earlier this month? Instead, here are two other reasons that he's a no-show on 'The View.'

|
Charles Dharapak/AP
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney campaigns in front of The Golden Lamb Inn and Restaurant in Lebanon, Ohio, Saturday, Oct. 13.

Mitt Romney is bailing on the women of ABC’s “The View,” in case you haven’t heard. When the talk show aired Monday morning, co-host Barbara Walters – the show’s empress of celebrity interviews – announced that the GOP nominee had canceled his scheduled Thursday appearance.

“Over the weekend, his people have said that he had scheduling problems and would not be coming on with us, nor at this point did he feel that he could reschedule,” Ms. Walters said.

Spouse Ann Romney had been booked along with her husband, and she’s still coming. Walters said “The View” was happy to have her.

“We are sorry we won’t have Governor Romney, and that’s the situation,” said Walters. We won’t characterize her tone of voice when she said this, but if we did, “peeved” is a word we’d consider.

So is Romney stiffing a show he doesn’t like? After all, the famous “47 percent” video from a Romney fundraiser showed him saying in private that “The View” was dangerous territory for him, full of liberals. Perhaps he’s giving it a miss because he’s figured out that Whoopi Goldberg would grill him about that, then Walters would get into the 47 percent numbers, and the next thing you know he’d be so low on the couch cushions that show nonliberal Elisabeth Hasselbeck wouldn’t be able to pull him out with an easy question.

Well, that’s possible. Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt is pushing that explanation: He tweeted this afternoon, “The View was apparently too ‘high risk’ for Mitt Romney.”

But we don’t really think that’s what’s going on. Romney has shown he can handle a tough televised situation, after all – remember the debate earlier this month? Instead, we’d posit two other reasons that Romney’s a no-show.

The first is that he doesn’t need “The View” anymore.

For months, the Romney campaign has been desperately trying to humanize its candidate, and toward that end, appearances on talk shows can be useful. A kind of transference goes on, in which viewers associate some of the comfort and good feelings they get from familiar hosts with the guests, no matter how many car elevators they own. The campaign made "The View” booking for this reason.

But the debate seems to have transformed how at least part of the public sees the Massachusetts ex-governor. Suddenly, polls show he’s made gains in likability. For instance, a Politico/George Washington University battleground poll out Monday has 51 percent of respondents saying they now view Romney favorably as a person, while 44 percent say they view him unfavorably. That’s the first time this survey has shown Romney’s favorable rating as above water – more positives then negatives.

In that context, "The View” does indeed look like a risk that Romney doesn’t have to run, because the level of voter approval has changed.

Second, this could be about Ann Romney as much as Mitt.

With only weeks to go before Election Day, Mrs. Romney's been stepping out more and more on her own. She semi-cohostedGood Morning America” the other day and did fine.

Her own likability ratings are higher than her husband’s. So why bother with Mitt? Just let Ann do it. She can exude warmth, distance herself when her husband’s policies are mentioned, and testify to his character. She’s the most effective Romney surrogate of all – as first lady Michelle Obama is for her husband.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Why did Mitt Romney cancel appearance on 'The View'?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/Vox-News/2012/1015/Why-did-Mitt-Romney-cancel-appearance-on-The-View
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe