Romney's "Cure For Insomnia"
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has a fondness for graphs and statistics.
"I find these charts interesting—you may be bored to tears," Romney said during a presentation on international trade at a campaign stop in Mason City, Iowa, on Thursday.
As he touts his new international trade proposal—which includes a partnership of free-trading nations that his campaign calls the "Reagan Zone of Economic Freedom"—Romney has turned to his old friend the PowerPoint to get his message across to Iowans.
Each time he gives his presentation, Romney jokes about how boring it might seem to people in the audience.
"If you have trouble sleeping tonight, just remember this and it'll put you right out," he said in Mason City.
"This is actually medicine here—this is known as the cure for insomnia," he joked in Waterloo the next day.
Though no one in the Waterloo audience actually nodded off during the event, the detailed chart comparing states' agricultural exports didn't exactly have anyone jumping out of their chairs either.
In fact, the crowd was silent until Romney finally turned his attention to social issues—they responded with enthusiastic applause when he delivered his standard stump lines on keeping marriage between a man and a woman and making sure kids know that before they have children, they should first get married.
But Romney's boardroom-like presentations on trade aren't meant to produce the kind of instantaneous responses that his lines on red-meat social issues often do. Instead, the PowerPoint displays seem designed to show off the competence and attention to detail of a man who spent the majority of his career as a highly-successful capitalist.
Romney hopes that even if they don't necessarily grasp all of the finer points of the Doha talks, Iowans who attend his campaign events will see a candidate who has a firm grasp on the way the economy works.