Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech wasn’t a great speech. If you’ve ever written a political or corporate speech as I have, you could tell it was mechanically engineered with all the rebuttals strategists and poll testing results demanded to be there in place. Each part crafted, sanded and polished and put in it’s place to hit all the check boxes rather than be a soaring speech.

He’s not the person you write a soaring speech for. His restrained personality makes any attempt like having a bass sing soprano notes. It’s just not in his range.

In his convention speech, Mitt Romney did swallow a few words that softened some lines. Still, have to admit, he did have some great lines.

The one he delivered best:

” Obama wants to stop the oceans from rising. I want to help you and your family,”

It’s not exactly true. But without a doubt, it is a very effective zing. So much it should come with the that “Pow!” title card cutaway from the 60s Batman fight scenes.

And I perked up when I thought Mitt Romney was tearing up when he was talking about missing moments with his children and the story the about the roses his dad left for his mom. And how they knew George Romney died because one day he didn’t leave one.

To put it in bar vernacular: People love that sh*t.

Mitt Romney is not Flava Flav. Or Ronald Reagan. Or Bill Clinton. But that speech created a base of humanity and empathy that the Romney campaign might use to start building a candidate that connects with people.

Revealing more of his humanity also lubricated some of the few policy points he did mention that are heavily supply side economics and muscular social conservatism to make them slide a little more easily past the ears of the audience that might be hostile to them.

“I will protect religion ( I read as “by making the state more accommodating to religious demands).” “Protect the sanity of life (wink, I’m really with you on the approved GOP platform of no abortion in any scenario)” and energy independence (oil companies, here’s a blank check, go nuts).

Mitt Romney’s job was to seem human, so he couldn’t have the juicy red meat Paul Ryan had the day before. And you can go the Washington Post for the fact-check analysis. But I kinda feel he maxed out being human in his speech. The emotionally restrained Mitt Romney put as much soul into his speech as he possibly could. So much, you could hear the Star Trek “Scotty” in his heart yelling, “Captain, the dilithium emotional engines are overloaded. That’s all I can give ya!”

Did it reboot Mitt Romney image with the public? No. But I do think it opened a small window to be rebooted if the public sees deeds following words.

Also I think this is an attempt to open up a new front against President Obama. The firewall President Obama has is even if they don’t agree with his polices, people like him. You can’t make a guy you like Hitler. And I think it why you haven’t seen his poll number collapse with discouraging economic numbers and a lot of message attacks. People like him enough to consider giving him another chance. If Romney can come off as more human, give people optimism and not just “the president is a bad guy,” he’ll do more damage to Obama by becoming a viable emotional and trust alternative to the president.