Quote:“You have to know the room, and he doesn’t know the room,” said a top Republican in D.C. who has donated to Romney and wants him to win. “He’s missing the normal-guy gene.” That’s self-evident: Just look at his painful references to athletics as “sport,” or his call Tuesday for experienced referees to return to “the NFL playing fields.” It’s just not how factory workers in Toledo, Ohio, talk.

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In a preview of the presidential debates in the September issue of The Atlantic, James Fallows described why Romney’s offer of a $10,000 bet with Texas Gov. Rick Perry reinforced the worst caricature of him. “If Romney had said ‘a million bucks,’” Fallows explained, “it would obviously have been hyperbolic; if he had said ‘a hundred bucks,’ it would have been a serious sum but comprehensible. Romney had instinctively found exactly the wrong number.

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The latest he’s-just-not-like-you moment came at a fundraiser in Washington on Thursday night. Romney was introduced by Bill Marriott, chairman of Marriott International, who tried to humanize his friend by telling a story of seeing Romney a few years ago while both were visiting their summer places on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. Marriott told of taking his children and grandchildren to town on his boat for ice cream when he needed someone to help tie up the boat at the dock.

“They all jumped off and ran up the dock,” Marriott said, according to the pool report. “And I realized there was nobody in the boat to help me dock the boat. … I said, ‘Who’s going to grab the rope?’ And I looked up and there was Mitt Romney. So he pulled me in, he tied up the boat for me. He rescued me — just as he’s going to rescue this great country.