Pinocchio wants to be a real person, and on Thursday night he’s going to attempt to make the transformation on national television.

The wooden Mitt Romney, who keeps pushing the blatant lie that President Obama wants to eliminate the work requirement for welfare, will give an acceptance speech that will be the culmination of a week designed to humanize and reintroduce him.

His bid for the White House may largely depend on how successfully he delivers that speech. Although he and Obama are virtually tied in the polls, Romney is losing the Electoral College count.

There are many reasons for that, including his campaign’s retro-radical policy positions in an increasingly diverse and increasingly socially progressive country. And then there’s his inability to connect with voters on a visceral level. Romney continues to trail Obama badly in terms of favorability and likability.

Overall, a modern convention is a non-news event, although you wouldn’t know that looking at the media swarm here in Tampa, Fla. The city was expecting up to 15,000 journalists, who would outnumber delegates and alternates by a margin of three to one.

Conventions are candidate coronations. But with all the media attention, they’re also unrivaled public relations events (except of course when Mother Nature gives birth to a hurricane named Isaac). All the scripts and glitz and camera-ready choreography are designed to whip up the faithful, to woo the wavering and to reach out to the disengaged.

It is here that Romney will make the plea to be normal, to be made real.

But before we get to that, let’s talk about the lies.

The Romney campaign is continuing to push the false notion that Obama has moved to eliminate the work requirement for welfare. Earlier this month, the Washington Post fact checker gave the charge its worst rating: Four Pinocchios. Tampa’s own PolitiFact also gave the claim its worst rating: pants on fire. And FactCheck.org concluded that the claim was false.

But instead of pulling back the attack, the Republicans are pushing forward with it. The Republican National Committee released a new ad last week. Rick Santorum even repeated the claim from the convention podium.

Neil Newhouse, a Romney pollster, recently explained that “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.” Or the facts themselves, obviously.

The tendency of the Romney campaign to intentionally misrepresent the truth has become a defining trait of this campaign cycle – though it is at odds with Romney’s own statements. Politico reported on Aug. 9, after Romney’s first false welfare charge, that he had said in a radio interview:

You know, in the past, when people pointed out that something was inaccurate, why, campaigns pulled the ad. They were embarrassed. Today, they just blast ahead. You know, the various fact checkers look at some of these charges in the Obama ads and they say that they’re wrong, and inaccurate, and yet he just keeps on running them.

That’s rich.

Now to warm and fuzzies.

On Tuesday night Ann Romney delivered a speech that started with the sappy line, “Tonight I want to talk to you about love,” and ended with a thud. The motif was Mitt, the boy she “met at a high school dance,” a fact that she repeated in some derivation six times. But there was something about the homage that felt hollow.

Mrs. Romney said that she wanted to “talk to you from my heart about our hearts,” but never the twain did meet. She tried, and I believe that maybe she could have delivered with a better-crafted speech, one with more killer lines and less killing me softly.

But the Romney campaign is hedging its bets in case no one can sell the “real Mitt.”

Gov. Chris Christie, delivering what FactCheck.org dubbed a “fact-free keynote,” imparted the opposite message from Mrs. Romney, as Mitt sat stiff and uncomfortable, looking like he was either choking back tears or regretting his lunch. Christie told the crowd, “I believe we have become paralyzed — paralyzed by our desire to be loved.” Later he said:

Tonight, we choose respect over love. We are not afraid. We are taking our country back.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison told MSNBC this week that “it’s not whether you like someone to elect them president, it’s whether that person will do the best for this country.” Romney himself summoned a certain rough-necked sailor, telling Fox News, “Remember that Popeye line: ‘I am what I am, and that’s all what I am.’”

Thursday will be showdown between Pinocchio and Popeye.

Mitt will get his last major chance to do what his wife couldn’t: to make America look past the lies and see a real person.