Romney to out-of-work Floridians: 'I'm also unemployed'

Mitt Romney's idea of hanging with 'the folks'
is getting a pit pass at Daytona (Reuters)
 

Jeff Zeleny:

Mitt Romney sat at the head of the table at a coffee shop here on Thursday, listening to a group of unemployed Floridians explain the challenges of looking for work. When they finished, he weighed in with a predicament of his own.

“I should tell my story,” Mr. Romney said. “I’m also unemployed.”

He chuckled. The eight people gathered around him, who had just finished talking about strategies of finding employment in a slow-to-recover economy, joined him in laughter.

“Are you on LinkedIn?” one of the men asked.

“I’m networking,” Mr. Romney replied. “I have my sight on a particular job.”

As Steve Benen said, when a guy like Romney who became a multimillionaire by "downsizing" workers at companies to make them more "efficient" jokes about being unemployed, it's a grating. Moreover:

To be fair, there’s at least a kernel of truth to it. Mitt Romney hasn’t worked a day in over five years — he can afford to kick back for a half-decade without breaking a sweat — but if memory serves, Romney had a job. During his brief tenure, he struggled with his duties, received poor performance evaluations, and his employers were ultimately relieved to see him quit.

Once upon a time, I would have said that Mitt Romney had all the charisma of John Kerry without the character. Now I think it's fair to say he doesn't even have the charisma.