NEW YORK — Bill Clinton was talking to a small group of people at a private gathering the other night and said a couple of things that made a big impression on me.

The first was: “When people are afraid, explanation beats eloquence any day.”

That’s right. Americans are fearful right now — about keeping their jobs, making the next mortgage payment, paying for college and, well, the future. They want answers. Mitt Romney provided none in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. If he was short on eloquence he was nowhere on explanation. He said he would turn things around but failed to say how.

Even The Wall Street Journal was critical of Romney on its editorial page: “Neither he nor the entire GOP convention made a case for his economic policy agenda. He and Paul Ryan promised to help the middle class, but they never explained other than in passing how they would do it.”

This has become the explanation election. Romney, in part through his wife, Ann, in part through some moving testaments to his kindness, and in part through a weird touchy-feely delivery, managed to soften himself a little even if the enigma endures. I don’t think American en masse will buy the pitiless capitalist label the Obama campaign wants to pin on Romney. You can’t change the fact that most Americans admire business success.