ABOARD THE ROMNEY CAMPAIGN PLANE -- Only hours before delivering her speech to a national audience, Ann Romney is ready to go (but her outfit is not).
While passing out home-baked Welsh cakes, her specialty, to the secret service and press corps, the former first lady of Massachusetts expressed confidence in the team that helped write her speech, and a bit of dismay that those same strategists would be also be helping to select her wardrobe.
“We’re having a great time. I’m excited about it,” Mrs. Romney said of the speech. “And the funniest thing of all is that Stuart Stevens, who wears his shirts inside-out, is advising me on what dress I should wear tonight. So I know I’ve come really full-circle now.”
“It was going to be like my wedding night -- I wasn’t going to let him know what I was going to wear. But now they have opinions,” Mrs. Romney said of her husband and his staff.
Mrs. Romney, who usually delivers her brief stump speech off the cuff, and almost never uses a teleprompter, said preparing for her speech with a teleprompter was “hard,” and said the ongoing process of refining the speech was exciting, if challenging.
“You know, I think you will see that my speech is heartfelt, and I think a lot of you have been covering me long enough and you know I've never gone off a written text. So this is a unique experience for me,” Romney said.
A reporter asked Romney what she hoped viewers at home would think as they watched the speech on television.
“How important this election’s going to be and how important it’s going to be for them to consider the right things to make their right decisions,” Mrs. Romney said, wrapping up the Q & A session.
“I think that’s it, guys. I’m just going to pass out the Welsh cakes now.”
