The Holy Cow! Candidate - © Copyright 2005 The Atlantic Monthly
As reporters flipped through their handouts, I found myself agreeing with Phil Johnston, the influential Massachusetts Democrat, who had told me that Romney “thinks politics consists of making announcements and pronouncements” and never actually connects with his constituents, because his presentations never descend from a distant level of almost mathematical analysis.Romney concedes his love of analysis, up to a point. “I like data,” he says. He sees issues such as transportation and health care and education as analytical problems to be solved—things that can be tinkered with and fixed, like an unprofitable company.
As CEO-governor Romney makes at least theoretical sense at times, especially when he’s talking about budget and fiscal issues. But when he moves beyond business principles to innovate in social policy, things can get kind of weird. Consider, for example, his proposal to reinstate the death penalty in Massachusetts. The Romney version of the death penalty, he has said, will be foolproof “to the extent that is humanly possible,” because it will use, among other things, a panel of scientific experts and additional judicial safeguards to determine guilt beyond any shadow of a doubt. That’s an expensive and cumbersome plan from a man who says he wants government to run with extreme efficiency. It also appears doomed to fail in the state legislature.
I asked Romney why he would spend political capital crusading for the death penalty when his plan would cost so much to put in place and in any event will most likely never be voted into law. “The first answer is—and I think it’s really hard for people to believe and understand this—because I said I would during the campaign. More than once during gubernatorial debates I was asked, ‘Do you support the death penalty?’ Yes. And then people said, ‘But how are you going to keep from executing the innocent?’ And I said by having a higher standard of care—something beyond ‘reasonable doubt.’ It should be clear and convincing evidence. Scientific evidence.”
The importance of using evidence and rigor and logic and data is something Romney gets in part from the Bain world view. But the importance of doing what you say and, significantly, of being careful what you say is something he learned from his father.
In appearance and demeanor Mitt is clearly his father’s son: forty years after Newsweek described George Romney as being straight from “central casting,” the former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich (who competed in the Massachusetts gubernatorial primary as a Democrat in 2002) described Mitt in exactly the same words. George Romney was born in 1907 to a farming couple at a Mormon outpost in Mexico. Forced from their home in 1912 by the army of Pancho Villa, the Romneys migrated around the West (they spent one impoverished winter in Idaho eating little but potatoes) before settling in Salt Lake City. George worked his way out of poverty, starting as a senator’s stenographer in Washington, D.C., and going on to scale the heights of the automotive industry; he was the general manager of the Automobile Manufacturers Association and later the president of American Motors. He also became active in Michigan politics, and in 1962 the Republican Party deemed him the worthiest gubernatorial candidate.
July 30th, 2005 at 6:52 pm
I read the article, Gurl, and I agree that it is very good. Questions like those about the garments WILL be asked, and geting them out of the way early, and in a manner which flatters the Governor, are a bonus.
I honestly think that the punditocracy is overestimating the hostility of evangelicals to Mormons. What they want is a moral PERSON, and Romney is that.
Don’t forget, Gore was the Baptist, and Bush is a Methodist. The person is bigger than the denomination.