Mitt's Mission

Romney and his campaign wanted to deal with the Mormon question quickly and move on. The Massachusetts experience taught that Mitt the Mormon lost elections and Mitt the turnaround artist won them. In the first weeks of the campaign, Romney sat for lengthy interviews on his faith with The New York Times and USA Today; if the campaign could make the Mormon factor a tired story line, reporters would have no choice but to write about something else.

Sure enough, another story line quickly fixed itself to Romney: Mitt the flip-flopper. From the outside, Romney's ideological conversions looked opportunistic. He had been a social moderate to win election in liberal Massachusetts—and reinvented himself as a social conservative to be viable in the primary race. With Romney reluctant to keep talking about the full story of his faith and family, he seemed to be failing to live up to the high principles of either. Candidate Mitt seemed a far cry from his father, who had condemned his party's presidential nominee in 1964 for making insensitive comments on race, and who had eventually sacrificed his own presidential ambitions by making the cardinal error in politics of saying what he thought about the war in Vietnam. "George was a man of strong principle who got into trouble when he stated his views directly and honestly," says Jonathan Moore, who advised the elder Romney on foreign policy in the 1968 campaign. "Mitt gets into trouble when his shifting of position to fit political circumstance suggests a lack of principle."

So what kind of president would Mitt Romney be? It often seems that Romney himself doesn't know. More disturbing, he is also unwilling to truly look to his own history for the answer. Asked by NEWSWEEK how he is most like his father, Romney saw only an opportunity to recite a familiar talking point about his own style as a manager, noting that George "did not just ask for opinions but for thoughtful analysis and data." Everything his family has lived through—religious persecution, the traversing of a continent, a noble tradition of service and the depths of political disappointment—it all pales in comparison with data. This is the man who in the great wisdom of political insiders is seen as congenitally presidential?

In fairness, it is true that Romney has the stuff of great presidents somewhere inside him. The making of Mitt Romney included the development of skills any leader would find invaluable—a strong work ethic, an insistence on sacrifice and a reverence for those who put the principles of humanity over the conveniences of the moment. But, to date, these traits have been hard to find in the public Mitt Romney. All that is really recognizable in him is a capacity for organization and packaging that are characteristic of his faith. Unfortunately, the politician Romney has been chiefly interested in organizing and packaging himself into is a man who seems to have no history, and, as a result, no heart. Latter-day Saints talk a lot about moving forward and making good choices. Going forward, Romney the candidate will have to search his soul and make some good choices about who he really is and what kind of president he wants to be.

With Elise Soukup and Daniel McGinn

© 2007