TAMPA, Fla. — This week, when Mitt Romney strides to center stage to deliver his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, he might draw inspiration from an unlikely source: the song “I Am What I Am” from the musical “La Cage Aux Folles.”
One of the chief complaints from voters about politicians is that they package themselves disingenuously to get elected, only to reveal their real agenda after they’ve won. That is what President Obama did in the 2008 campaign, when he styled himself as a unifier who wanted to bridge the partisan divide: “[W]e are not a collection of red states and blue states. We are the United States of America.” He then governed more like he was in Soviet America, with redistribution of income and more centralized power in Washington.
