Ann Romney’s impassioned speech helps fill ‘likeability gap’

Leading up to Romney’s Thursday night acceptance speech, the convention is designed as a crash course for making him less of an unfeeling CEO and politician and more of a family man, an everyday American, and a good neighbor.

Ann Romney on Tuesday began laying the groundwork with her impassioned speech, challenging the claims that her husband is a job-killing, uncaring private equity financier.

Her stories about living in a basement apartment, eating pasta and tuna on a makeshift ironing board table made her appealing and offered a brief window in her husband background and established that he does have a pulse.

“I read somewhere that Mitt and I have a ‘storybook marriage,'” she said. “Well, in the storybooks I read, there were never long, long, rainy winter afternoons in a house with five boys screaming at once. And those storybooks never seemed to have chapters called MS or Breast Cancer. A storybook marriage? No, not at all. What Mitt Romney and I have is a real marriage.”

The New York Times, offered a backhanded compliment, saying: