Mitt, We Hardly Knew Ye
barnett, dean
Mitt, We Hardly Knew Ye Romney bows out. BY DEAN BARNETT One night in early 1994, I found myself in a Republican ward committee meeting in Newton, Massachusetts. It promised to be a...
...But it’s far from a foregone conclusion that Romney will remain in public life...
...Conservatives and even the larger public will come to judge him by the value of his ideas and the forcefulness of his presentation...
...The most dismaying fact wasn’t that the candidates attacked one another—politics ain’t beanbag...
...I had become an admirer, something that I remain to this day...
...That may happen again...
...By the end of the night, even Mandel was a little sold, whispering to me in an exaggerated Boston accent, “He’s a chahmah...
...Those who spend time with him, not all of them politically friendly, regularly testify that George W. Bush in person bears little resemblance to his Saturday Night Live incarnation...
...Not all present looked forward to Romney’s visit...
...It often happens that a disconnect develops between the public’s perception of a politician and the real man...
...But I hope he hangs around the Republican party, and not just because of my own fondness for him...
...But it made the party seem mired in the disputes of the 1980s and ’90s, and bereft of fresh ideas...
...I went home that night thinking I had seen a candidate in action who would someday be president of the United States...
...He was competing against a 1982 gubernatorial candidate for the Republican nomination and, then as now, wasn’t conservative enough for everyone’s tastes...
...Beyond our usual festivities— chattering about lost school committee races and eating cupcakes and cookies—Senate candidate Mitt Romney was scheduled to pop in for a visit...
...His apparently limitless funds (which were much more limited 14 years ago) also irked some party regulars...
...Yet with few politicians has the public perception diverged as dramatically from the real man as with Mitt Romney...
...His intelligence was apparent...
...One of the reasons so many Republicans found this primary season dispiriting is that the candidates, Romney included, concentrated on “contrasting” themselves with one another...
...Let’s hope Mitt Romney sticks around for the cupcakes and cookies, and joins the fun...
...There will be many consequential conversations to come...
...He was another liberal one...
...I decided to do some spadework to prepare the room for Romney’s arrival...
...And if he decides to stay active in Republican and conservative politics, the YouTubes of performances from years gone by, which plagued him with a reputation for fl ip-fl opping, will eventually recede into irrelevance...
...I had been volunteering for Romney for a month and had gotten to know him reasonably well...
...Even in a liberal enclave like Massachusetts, the kind of Republican party activists who bother to attend ward committee meetings are extremely conservative...
...Romney now has the profi le, not to mention the bankroll, to get his ideas before the public...
...Yet too much of the voting public came to believe that Romney was more like Grandma’s good-for-you but inedible chopped liver...
...The great shame of the Romney campaign is that he was never able to fully convince the public that he sought the presidency not just out of ambition or even a belief in his own abilities, but because he wanted to take America in a very well-defi ned direction...
...Popular opinion holds that Romney now has his sights set on 2012 or 2016...
...Dean Barnett is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...How many times he went hunting will cease to matter...
...That “someday” will not be in 2009...
...To those who know him, Romney is decent, intelligent, likable, and creative...
...It provides some consolation to supporters that by the time the end came, Romney’s convictions had fi nally bubbled to the surface, and that a fair number of conservatives belatedly embraced the Romney campaign...
...And it’s true that the Romney campaign had a top shelf product to sell...
...So too were his people skills and his ability to connect...
...Former Massachusetts governor William F. Weld last week likened Romney to “prime sirloin”— presumably as opposed to run-of-themill political “horsefl esh...
...The blame for this must lie mainly with Romney and the Romney campaign...
...What conservatism will come to stand for is more up for grabs now than at any point since 1980...
...Al Mandel, the gun-packing, 70-something conservative conscience of Newton’s Republicans, recalled Romney’s father...
...He had an encyclopedic command of the issues...
...Romney came to our meeting and spent a couple of hours discussing everything that was on everyone’s mind...
...The perspective and experience of successful business executives is sorely lacking from the political debate, even on the Republican side...
...After losing to Ted Kennedy in 1994, having run a strong race that engendered much good will in the Commonwealth, he returned to his business and his family...
...It promised to be a relatively eventful evening...
...He has the added benefi t for a politician of having no skeletons in his closet...
Vol. 13 • February 2008 • No. 22
