The Holy Cow! Candidate - © Copyright 2005 The Atlantic Monthly
The defeat was jarring for Romney, who “was embarrassed to have asked so many people to work for him without delivering results,” according to Tagg Romney, the oldest of Mitt’s five sons. “At that point he was so used to delivering—delivering shareholder results to investors, turning Bain & Company around. Losing the Senate race was his first major experience with defeat.”“I was taught a lesson by one of the great politicians of our age,” Romney joked to me. “Never, ever run against Ted Kennedy. At least not in Massachusetts. Give me any other state and I’m all up for it.”
A few years ago the smart money would have bet that that state would be Utah, where the Romney name carries great currency. It was in Utah that Romney returned to the public stage as the savior of the 2002 Olympic Games.
In 1998 the organizers of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City were accused of having used bribes—including a college scholarship for the child of an African Olympic official—to secure the votes necessary to bring the games to Utah. Though the Utah officials were eventually cleared in court of outright criminality, a stain was left on Salt Lake City’s pristine image. The morale of the Olympics’ staff had gone into free fall. Revenues were not meeting costs. New sponsorship had dried up. The marketing program was effectively dead. In desperation, state leaders turned to Romney, who had spent the previous four years back in the private sector. He was cool to the idea at first; he had never been much of a sportsman, and knew very little about the Olympics. But, prodded by Ann, he took the job, as president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, and by applying the Bain world view (emphasizing the need to be disciplined about spending, he scaled back the budgets for the opening and closing ceremonies and cut many other Olympics extras), he saved the day. When the games ended, in February of 2002, people were talking not about payoffs to African Olympic officials but, rather, about the Canadian skaters who had been shafted by a French judge. They were also talking about the skill of Mitt Romney.
“Mitt personified the 2002 Winter Olympic Games,” Rocky Anderson, the mayor of Salt Lake City, told me. Anderson is a Democrat, and a strong supporter of abortion rights and gay marriage. Yet he endorsed Romney for the 2002 gubernatorial run because of Romney’s success with the games. “I’ve told all my Democratic friends that they politically need to be aware of him,” Anderson says.
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.