Noonan: America Meets Mr. Romney

Anticipating the highlights of the GOP's Tampa convention.

• By PEGGY NOONAN

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It is good that Joe Biden is going to the Republican National Convention to hold high the flag of his party. People make fun of his gaffes, of his embarrassing verbal forays, but he's no fool and he knows how to take it to the other guy. The speech he is working on, to be given in the heart of downtown, just across from the convention site, will be stirring and stentorian: "All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Tampa, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, 'Ich bin ein Tampon.'"
I wish that were mine. It came in the mail from a Hollywood screenwriter, one of the gifted conservatives who quietly toil there.

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Associated Press

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his wife Ann in Schaumburg, Ill., in March.

This, amazingly enough, is how the campaign feels at the moment: both neck and neck and wide open. A week ago a longtime elected official, who's been making the rounds in his swing state, told me he thought the national polls were correct and yet wrong. Americans are telling pollsters they've already made up their minds, they know who they're for. But, he said, he's seeing a number of people who don't feel fully satisfied with their decision, who aren't certain they've made the right choice. They may change their minds. "Ten or 15%", he guessed, "are still persuadable," still open to argument.
If he is right, that's big. It would be in line with the singular nature of this election year, and would explain what has been, so far, a fervor deficit.