"The footage would capture the candidate seeming engaged in the kind of heart-to-heart dialogues with working-class Americans that the campaign had otherwise left off his schedule that day." (Image by Gage Skidmore .)

The source of the considerable reservoir of rage beneath Mitt Romney’s well-polished exterior is as mysterious as President Obama’s ever-present sense of calm–though it’s obviously more concerning. Robert Draper’s new New York Times Magazine article about the likely GOP Presidential nominee suggests that Romney is unflappable–I’m not buying it–but makes good points about the guy you’d least like to have a beer with competing for the country’s highest office. An excerpt;

“It’s very unlikely that we’ll ever hear Mitt Romney and Barack Obama openly discuss the things they have in common. Nonetheless, we may well see in the general election a contest between two dispassionate and accommodating pragmatists and skilled debaters who relish intellectual give-and-take, and whose willingness to compromise has infuriated the party faithful. Both have promised change. Each will frame the other as being not up to the task.

How ably Romney the nominee will defend himself, given the kid-gloves treatment by his current competition and the campaign’s avoidance of large segments of his own life story, is difficult to say just yet. In early November I watched Romney return to Iowa for only the fourth time. He stopped in Dubuque and Davenport and, before decent-size crowds, essentially regurgitated his address on the economy from the week before. In both cases he spoke for less than 20 minutes and did not take questions from the audience. Far more of his ground time was devoted to filming promotional material in a Dubuque sheet-metal factory, where the footage would capture the candidate seeming engaged in the kind of heart-to-heart dialogues with working-class Americans that the campaign had otherwise left off his schedule that day.

Near the end of his talk in Davenport, he said to the 275 east Iowans in attendance, ‘I want you to get to know me a little better.’ After wrapping up his speech, he moved briskly through the crowd, pausing now and then to take photos and sign autographs, before flying out of Iowa with Stuart Stevens and a couple of other staff members.”

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“Did you hear what I said?”