ASU Reacts: "Let Mitt Be Mitt: But Who Was He?"

Last week our English 101 class was assigned to analyze an NPR story. The one that I chose was called, "'Let Mitt Be Mitt': But Who Was He?" by Ari Shapiro. Shapiro explained what went wrong with Mitt Romney's campaign and why he lost the election. Shapiro's main argument was that Americans want to like their president, and that was the major conflict Romney had to face. Shapiro supports his argument by quoting Mitt Romney at some of his speeches. Shapiro mentions that Romney really lacked at the public speaking portions of his campaign. He would talk about himself mostly, rather than the people of our country. Another potential problem that Romney faced was his religious beliefs and the fact that he is a Mormon. College students at Arizona State University have their own opinions about why the 2012 election played out the way it did.

“I think that the reason that Romney lost the election was because he was a Mormon. He had very extreme views and plans for our country. The public wanted to know more about what he was going to do for America, but he wouldn’t open up on a personal level like Obama did. Because we have more of a middle-class and even lower, we are more of a nation filled with more Democrats than we have Republicans.” 

“Obama is an incumbent and he has the advantage of having the White House press. He has more money because of the fact that he had already served one term. Obama had more of a demographic advantage because he supported women’s rights. And we also tend to see that the larger states with more electoral votes are Democratic.” 

In a college setting, it is easy to find that there are so many different opinions out there. The Democrats see what Romney did wrong and explained a lot of the same points that Shapiro had mentioned in her story. Whereas the Republicans that I spoke to mentioned the reason’s that Obama already had a somewhat of an unfair advantage over Romney.