Poor Mitt. He became the Republican candidate for president by default, as the least worst choice from a pack of bizarre characters seemingly drawn from reality TV shows or Thomas Pynchon novels, but he’s not finding much love, even at his own coronation. Only 27 per cent of Americans think that he’s a ‘likeable’ guy. (Obama gets 61 per cent.) On television he projects a strange combination of self-satisfaction and an uneasiness about dealing with others who might doubt his unerring rectitude. The only well-known anecdotes about his bland life of acquiring wealth are both cruel: leading a pack of bullies at his prep school, personally cutting off the long hair of a weeping and pleading gay student, and putting the family dog in a box on the roof of his car for a twelve-hour drive to Canada. (His five sons knew something was wrong when they saw diarrhoea streaming down the back window.) Even Ann Romney, given the task of ‘humanising’ Mitt on the opening night of the Republican convention, couldn’t come up with a single warm or amusing story from their 43 years of marriage. One commentator has compared him to Prince Charles at a welcoming ceremony in New Guinea: he maintains a fixed half-smile, but has no idea what the natives are getting excited about.