Romney uses debt clock prop

Washington Post:

Sure, he’s sometimes stiff. Mitt Romney has a bad rap for being, well, boring. But now he has a flashy new sidekick.

Meet the debt clock — a giant, green, glowing and growing debt clock.

Just before the Republican presidential candidate walked into a steamy gymnasium here Thursday for his fourth town hall meeting in two days, the clock reported the national debt at $14,658,049,919,888.88. The average debt per taxpayer was $131,119.

Sixty-five minutes later, when he bade farewell to a couple hundred clapping New Hampshire voters, the debt was $14,658,234,132,999.88. That meant $131,121 per taxpayer.

Throughout his give-and-take with voters here, Romney engaged with his clock. He gestured at it, bragged about it and was dead serious talking about it.

“It’s a frightening thing here as we watch these tens of thousands of dollars going by second by second, hundreds of thousands of dollars going by by the minute,” Romney said. “I don’t know who told politicians that there was a number that was called a trillion, but they learned it, and now they’ve borrowed it.”

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The Romney team constructed their own "clock" and tied it to internet clocks for the data screening. It is a clever prop. Perhaps it will detract from his performance on the stump.