Sandy's shore conundrum for Mitt

I am in Roanoke Virginia awaiting my first eyeball contact with Mitt Romney. This is a rail town in the farthest depths of Virginia, where we are true foreigners. But it’s hometown for Romney in this critical swing state.

I came to America intrigued by Mitt’s Mormonism – his two years of missionary work in France; his life as a Mormon Bishop; as a Wall Street investor; and as a Liberal Republican Governor of Massachusetts.

Actually about the latter, I have known much anyway, having taken holidays in his back yard of Cape Cod – great healthcare, education, gun control, and much else. But of those subjects and his achievements, we have heard little because they happen to alienate ‘small government’ Tea Party voters whose support he desperately needs.

But oddly today, those issues have all taken a back seat to Sandy – who is suddenly somewhere near the driving seat in this election, for now anyway. Yesterday Mr Obama swept through Sandy’s grizzly wake in chinos and fleece hugging the dispossessed, grieving with the distressed. Suddenly there was visual connection with some of the images that enabled half America to fall in love with him in 2008.

Yesterday in Florida, Mr Romney wisely never even uttered the word Obama. It’s the first time that has happened at any of his rallies. His personal assaults on the President have been the stock-in-trade of this campaign. As they have been for Mr Obama of Mitt Romney.

So what does Mr Romney do here in Roanoke today? Does he mention the man by name? Does he attack him?  It’s tricky … love may be a many splendid thing, but if it has flared briefly, it’s tough getting too brutal with it. By the way, that love for Obama has returned – 78 per cent approval rating amongst all voters over his handling of the hurricane crisis.

Mr Romney’s conundrum with climate change is simpler. He has never mentioned it in this period of the presidential campaign. Indeed the last time he did was in making a joke of it at the Republican Convention. Don’t hold your breath against his mentioning it today, because he won’t. And he certainly will not in talking of Sandy in these terms. Mr Romney is a “dash for gas” man.

But then Mr Obama has rarely mentioned climate change either. So your bet against his mentioning it either is pretty safe too.

I’m left with our five-hour nocturnal drive here from Washington. This vastly road-dependent nation was in full spate last night. It seemed that every car, every truck from the back yards of every home and business in Virginia that could be mustered to go bumper to bumper at 60mph on Route 66, had been mustered.

And stupid me, as I gripped the wheel, I thought of emissions again – not verbal, but petro-chemical.  And wrestle as I might, in conjuring the images of Obama on the wasted shores of New Jersey, and Romney on the stump, I could not get the wretched thought of global warming and Sandy’s shoreline out of my mind.

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