REPORTERS NOTEBOOK: Mitt Romney's 'Chutzpah'

One Reporter, one night. On the campaign trail with former Gov. Mitt Romney

ByABC News
February 9, 2009, 5:42 PM

Apr. 27, 2007 — -- When you cover a major presidential candidate, you don't expect to be lonely. But lonely I was, in the back of the mammoth Gotham Hall in New York City, waiting to hear former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney deliver a speech on the threat of nuclear jihad.

It isn't that I was alone. The room with full of students from Yeshiva University's Sy Syms School of Business, celebrating the schools 20th anniversary. It was just that I was one of the only reporters there, and I was underdressed.

Originally Gov. Romney was supposed to speak at 7:15 p.m., but scheduling changes meant he didn't go on until just before 9 p.m. Maybe that is why there weren't more reporters there.

But it could also be why the Romney campaign is spending $2 million dollars in a national ad campaign to reinforce to people, including reporters, that he is a candidate to be reckoned with, and covered.

Romney opened the speech with a riff on the risks and rewards of the business world:

"It takes some nerve to buy a company from someone else, someone who knows the business inside out, someone who has decided that now is the best time to sell, someone who has hired an investment banker to hawk it to everywhere, and then to think that having paid more than anyone else was willing to pay, you would make a profit on your investment."

Romney said that doing this takes a lot of "chutzpah," but perhaps no less "chutzpah" than a Mormon candidate trying to speak Yiddish in front of a big Jewish crowd.

Romney delivered the speech as the students in the crowd ate their dinners. Their attention wavered as the former governor explained the threat of what he called "violent jihadists."

"We are faced with the horrific proposition that those who speak of genocide are developing the capability to carry it out," he said.

The governor was passionate in his delivery, but most impressive in his use of PowerPoint, clicking through computer slides with much more grace and familiarity than his attempts at Yiddish.