It's not smart of Romney at all to do this. Romney being vague has given Obama as the well-known incumbent a HUGE opening to do the defining for him, to independents & swing voters who don't pay close attention to politics. Similar to what happened to Kerry in '04, who Romney is even weaker than. Romney has no core values in politics so the Obama campaign is doing the etch-a-sketching for him.
There is a difference between defining of self and laying out a detailed political plan and agenda.
The Kenyan anti-Christ laid out little, if any, real specifics of policy during the 2008 election. In fact, I knew folks who thought he was a conservative pro-lifer. But he did take care to define himself as: brilliant; compassionate; hip; articulate; cool and reasoned (as opposed to McCain's overall nuttiness); a good family man; urbane; non-ideological (a surprisingly-important conceit) and; lettered.
I don't see him as much of any of those things, but he was very successful in getting folks on board thinking those things about him. So, we had Chris Matthews getting a hard-on for the anti-Christ, David Brooks marveling about the anti-Christ’s knowledge of Niebuhr, and Peggy Noonan gushing about how competent he was and how he could rise above partisanship.
Yet, the whole of his policy platform was “hope and change” and “I'm not Bush.”
Romney is following this successful model quite carefully. Whether he succeeds isn't certain, but he's doing the right things. He's coming across as thoughtful, intelligent, successful, upbeat, personally decent, not especially ideological, and most importantly, competent.
The whole of his policy platform could be given as “We'll fix the economy!” and he definitely has the whole “I'm not Obama” thing going for him.
sitetest