Jeff Rosenzweig: Slouching Towards Tampa (Truckin' edition)
If he were put on an antique diving helmet and a gorilla suit and recite the Gettysburg Address from a diving board forty-three feet above a wading pool filled with piranhas, Mitt Romney still wouldnt be the slightest bit interesting. Except, perhaps, to Jim Wilson, a retired insurance salesman whose fascination with Romney approaches idolatry, as noted in a previous edition of this column.
For reasons known only to Wilson, his Maker and possibly his therapist, back in 2011 the man began following the candidate all over the country, something even the Romney clan wife Ann and sons Tagg, Tugg, Borg, Blip and Fauntleroy seem reluctant to do. Wilsons admiration was aptly characterized by the New York Times as fanatical in a May profile. Among other things, the article amusingly revealed the campaigns initial suspicions about the man:
The Romney campaign kept its distance from him at first. Aides to Mr. Romney, nervous that a suddenly ubiquitous fan might prove a liability, went so far as to vet him. Finding nothing alarming, they began to see an upside to his doggedness and free labor.
Uh-huh. The upside being that despite Romneys clearly absolute dearth of charisma, the campaign can always point to Wilson as evidence that the candidate is capable of some sort of quasi-human quasi-connection. In a reassuring sign of prudence, however, Wilson seems to realize that a face-to-face meeting with his hero just might kill the magic...