One night in early 1994, I found myself in a Republican ward committee meeting in Newton, Massachusetts. It promised to be a relatively eventful evening. 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.
I had been volunteering for Romney for a month and had gotten to know him reasonably well. I had become an admirer, something that I remain to this day. I decided to do some spadework to prepare the room for Romney’s arrival.
Not all present looked forward to Romney’s visit. He was competing against a 1982 gubernatorial candidate for the Republican nomination and, then as now, wasn’t conservative enough for everyone’s tastes. His apparently limitless funds (which were much more limited 14 years ago) also irked some party regulars.
Even in a liberal enclave like Massachusetts, the kind of Republican party activists who bother to attend ward committee meetings are extremely conservative. Al Mandel, the gun-packing, 70-something conservative conscience of Newton’s Republicans, recalled Romney’s father. “He was another liberal one.”
Romney came to our meeting and spent a couple of hours discussing everything that was on everyone’s mind. He had an encyclopedic command of the issues. His intelligence was apparent. So too were his people skills and his ability to connect. By the end of the night, even Mandel was a little sold, whispering to me in an exaggerated Boston accent, “He’s a chahmah.” I went home that night thinking I had seen a candidate in action who would someday be president of the United States.
That “someday” will not be in 2009.
It often happens that a disconnect develops between the public’s perception of a politician and the real man. 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. Yet with few politicians has the public perception diverged as dramatically from the real man as with Mitt Romney.
The blame for this must lie mainly with Romney and the Romney campaign. To those who know him, Romney is decent, intelligent, likable, and creative. He has the added benefit for a politician of having no skeletons in his closet. Former Massachusetts governor William F. Weld last week likened Romney to “prime sirloin”–presumably as opposed to run-of-the-mill political “horseflesh.” And it’s true that the Romney campaign had a top shelf product to sell. 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-defined direction. It provides some consolation to supporters that by the time the end came, Romney’s convictions had finally bubbled to the surface, and that a fair number of conservatives belatedly embraced the Romney campaign.
Popular opinion holds that Romney now has his sights set on 2012 or 2016. But it’s far from a foregone conclusion that Romney will remain in public life. 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. That may happen again.
But I hope he hangs around the Republican party, and not just because of my own fondness for him. The perspective and experience of successful business executives is sorely lacking from the political debate, even on the Republican side. Romney now has the profile, not to mention the bankroll, to get his ideas before the public.
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 flip-flopping, will eventually recede into irrelevance. Conservatives and even the larger public will come to judge him by the value of his ideas and the forcefulness of his presentation. How many times he went hunting will cease to matter.
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. The most dismaying fact wasn’t that the candidates attacked one another–politics ain’t beanbag. But it made the party seem mired in the disputes of the 1980s and ’90s, and bereft of fresh ideas.
What conservatism will come to stand for is more up for grabs now than at any point since 1980. There will be many consequential conversations to come. Let’s hope Mitt Romney sticks around for the cupcakes and cookies, and joins the fun.
Dean Barnett is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
