Ward Cleaver for President

Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, 2008 US presidential candidate. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mitt Romney accepted the nomination of the Republican party as its Great White House Hope in Tampa, Florida Thursday night.  Fortunately for him, Hurricane Isaac no longer dominates the headlines now that it's a tropical depression, dumping tons of water on New Orleans and points north.  So the way was clear for Romney to make the speech of his career.

As it turned out, Romney seemed to be running for National Dad than President of the United States.  His speech was warm, fuzzy, and totally "Leave It To Beaver"-ish, lacking any substance whatsoever.  When it came to criticizing President Barack Obama's record over the last four years, it was like Ward Cleaver gently expressing his disappointment when his sons Wally and Beaver did something wrong.  Romney also talked about his background, describing his childhood in an America where anything's possible.  Wally and the Beav grew up in that world, too.

Romney said he wanted to restore America's confidence from four years of a depressed economy by putting them back to work.  He also wanted to bring back the swagger that helped to gain the respect of the rest of the world, even though his recent European tour was a disaster.  Then he all but declared war on Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program.  And, of course, he wants to repeal "Obamacare".  Even though most of the provisions in the Affordable Health Care Act came from when he was governor of Massachusetts.

Romney was just like the other speakers at the convention, conveniently skipping over two things:  The George W. Bush presidency, and GOP obstructionism in Congress that contributed to Obama's failures to get anything done.  There was hardly a mention of American soldiers currently serving in the two wars Bush started.

If the purpose of Romney's acceptance speech was for the Great American Public to see him as something other than a clueless rich guy who happened to be a Mormon, they succeeded.  He's now a sitcom dad reciting words of wisdom from a script or a Teleprompter, backed by a family that could have stepped out of a life insurance ad, espousing an America that once was and could be yet again.  Whether that's enough to persuade voters to ditch President Obama in November remains to be seen.