Why Romney Will Win

Turnout, enthusiasm, and confidence. 

Those are the simple reasons Republican Mitt Romney is likely to win Tuesday’s presidential election. 

Recent polls in states previously considered safe for President Barack Obama show that Romney has indeed expanded the map: he is one point up in Minnesota, and dead even in Pennsylvania. 

More than that, while Obama issues irritable calls for “revenge,” Romney is closing like a winner.

It seems true that Hurricane Sandy may have given Obama a bit of a bounce, perhaps slowing what seemed like runaway momentum for Romney. Charles Krauthammer, who predicted a narrow Romney win on Friday, noted regardless that Obama had incredible luck: “Napoleon–it is said the one quality he wanted and demanded in generals more than any other was luck. Obama would have been a good general in Napoleon’s army.”

One doubts Obama would have settled for general. But analogies to Napoleon seem particularly apt. 

In War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy notes that “the retreat of the French from Moscow was a series of victories for Napoleon and of defeats for [Russian general] Kutuzov”–and yet “the series of Russian defeats led them to the total destruction of the foe and the purging of the fatherland” of the dwindling, desperate Napoleonic army.

Likewise, the Obama campaign seems to be good at winning small victories–Sandy, some polls here and there, perhaps (according to some) the last two debates–and yet it continues to cede ground to Romney.

Obama–no surprise–is winning news cycles, but Romney is winning the election. 

And he is doing so because a majority of the American people have simply had enough nastiness, enough radicalism, enough of this president.