Mitt Romney’s Invisibility Strategy

 Joe Klein complains that the Republican nominee is being beastly to the press. 

Mitt Romney is clearly a candidate terrified by his own mouth. What other explanation for his campaign’s extreme efforts to prevent reporters from asking him questions? I know that there isn’t much public sympathy for journalistic whining – including my own occasional, stupid laments – about the lack of access. But Romney’s staff has clearly taken this to a new level, preventing reporters from even watching the candidate’s mini-town meeting with middle-class voters at one stop.

Given how grim these events tend to be (and how repetitive life is on the campaign trail) one might think being excluded from Romney’s events a blessing. The surprise is not that reporters are sometimes denied access to these events but that they are so often permitted to attend them. Much – perhaps even most – of the time the candidate derives little benefit from the presence of national reporters on the campaign trail.