There are many reasons, but over at Gene Expression I assert that Mitt Romney simply comes off as too wonky and brainy to do well in the Republican primaries in 2012. You don’t need to be dull to be nominated. Both John McCain and George W. Bush had IQs which were well above average based on standardized test scores, though both also underperformed their measured aptitudes in their higher educational careers (McCain more than Bush). But I think it is fair to say that since Richard Nixon all the Republican nominees for president have been intellectually modest in their presentation to the public (this does not mean that they were actually intellectually modest in their endowments. For example, I think that George H. W. Bush had both aptitude and realized academic achievement in his youth). The Democrats have struck a different profile. Both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were smart (Carter has a degree in physics in engineering from the Naval Academy, class rank 59 out of 820, and was a nuclear engineer in the navy*), but balanced out their academic orientation with a folksy Southern charm (in Clinton’s case his personal morals seem to have been crassly base, making him “earthier”). Michael Dukakis was a nerd, with no balancing qualities. Barack Obama mixed the “wine-track” with the black segment of the Democratic primary.
In many ways I think Mitt Romney is like Michael Dukakis. Both governors of Massachusetts, and nerds. Romney is physically robust and handsome, but for some reason he seems to come off as a nerd on testosterone to many people. I think this is why he was so detested in the 2008 primaries by his rivals. He’s smart, rich and handsome. These should be traits which make him an object of admiration and envy, but instead he is perceived as a striving overachiever, and elicits resentment from his peers. And I think that’s partly because he can’t mask his management consultant affect (I now suspect his flip-flopping and Mormonism come into higher profile because people want to give him a wedgie).
Note: To be clear, I am positively predisposed toward Romney. But the more I think about it the more pessimistic I get about his prospects in the primaries. Once in the general I think Republicans put-off by his nerd sensibility would vote for anyone but the Democrat, just as they did for McCain despite previous antipathy. And Romney’s wonkish competence would probably start to draw in upwardly mobile professionals, former nerds themselves quite often, who aren’t part of the Republican primary voter base.
* Some readers were skeptical of Carter’s educational credentials. It looks like he has exaggerated his background in physics, he took an uncredited graduate level course at Union College. His undergraduate degree at the Naval Academy was engineering, the most common degree given in the service academies. His son does have a degree in nuclear physics from Georgia Tech.