Romney's Energy Gaffe

The headline practically wrote itself: "Romney Endorses Hitler's Energy Policy."

At least that's what I told a flack from a rival campaign who was pushing the story of an odd remark the former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, made yesterday during a speech to the Northern Virginia Technology Council, in McLean, Va.

"I'm afraid building a nuclear power plant in our country today would require us first to hire the French to show us how to do it because they've been building 'em and we haven't," Mr. Romney said in response to a question about energy policy during his talk, as captured on video by the Washington Post's politics Web log.

So far, so good. But he kept going. "Liquefied coal, gosh. Hitler during the Second World War — I guess because he was concerned about losing his oil — liquefied coal. That technology is still there."

There was nothing exactly wrong with what the governor said. He was mostly correct historically; German scientists developed the technology to liquefy coal, and Adolf Hitler used it during the war. And of course Mr. Romney wasn't endorsing any of Hitler's less popular policies; but if Hitler was a pioneer in alternative fuels, then bully for him.

Still, there was an element of common sense missing from Mr. Romney's remarks. You know, that little voice that pipes up in a presidential candidate's head to gently remind him or her: "DON'T MENTION HITLER IN A POSITIVE LIGHT!"

It's worth noting that this wasn't Mr. Romney's first gaffe — not even his first Nazi-related gaffe. He raised eyebrows back in February when he kicked off his presidential campaign at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich. Aside from being an industrialist, Ford was also a notorious anti-Semite, awarded the Grand Service Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle by Hitler.

There are so many ways to make a fool of oneself on the campaign trail that candidates hardly know which one to pick when they get up in the morning. President Bush was partial to the "just not knowing the answer" technique, such as when he was asked in 1999 to name the leaders of Chechnya, Taiwan, India, and Pakistan. (He offered "Lee" as the answer on Taiwan; he was probably playing the odds on that one, but managed to come close to naming President Lee Teng-hui.)

In the current campaign, Mayor Giuliani has been a big fan of the "unnecessarily antagonizing potential allies" method, such as when he said recently that the Republican Party needs to "get beyond" abortion.

Senator McCain of Arizona has actually come up with a pretty decent way of inoculating himself against embarrassment. He does so many crazy things and cares so little that he's doing them — singing a song about bombing Iran, to take an example from yesterday — that it all just seems okay. I call this the Demented Grandpa System.

Mr. Romney, however, somehow got pegged by the national press as "the smooth one." They dubbed him Matinee Mitt. Clearly, it's the hair that fooled them.

In fact, a study of the campaign so far shows that Mr. Romney is the most gaffe-prone of all the Republican candidates.

Who could forget earlier this month, when it came out that Mr. Romney, who had described himself as a lifelong hunter, had only hunted twice in his life — and even those times just rabbits and rodents? As the governor put it: "small varmints, if you will."

There was also Mr. Romney's painful Cuba gaffe, where he mistook a communist slogan for a statement of Free Cuban patriotism.

Heck, I was even in the audience at a small gathering in early March when the governor accidentally insulted his wife. "I feel old," Ann Romney told a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "You are!" her husband chimed in. The crowd winced. "It's a joke, we're the same age," he clarified to the uncomfortable audience.

Forget Matinee Mitt. Hello, Maladroit Mitt.