November 8, 2007

Mitt Romney
The straight arrow
By Brian Early bearly@hippopress.com

Mitt Romney is the former governor of Massachusetts and a Republican presidential hopeful. He is the co-founder of Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm, and former CEO of Bain & Company, a management consulting firm. He also served as president to the 2002 Olympic Winter Games.

Q:If you could do one thing as president, what would it be?
The one thing I want to do is make sure that America remains the most powerful nation on Earth. Doing that is not easy. You have to bring a lot of things together. But America remaining the superpower of the planet is essential to the peace and prosperity of our nation.

Why is that?
A world where China or another nation was the superpower would be a very different land. America is unique in history in that we have fought and died to protect liberty for ourselves and for liberty-loving people around the world. A world where we were not the superpower and a nation like China were the superpower is not a nation where our kids could expect the freedoms, the prosperity and the hope which has come to characterize this country.

We were not always the superpower and we did fairly well.
Yes. We were not. Early on it was Great Britain and France, and they shared our values to a great degree. As a nation with similar values took over for them, the world remained a relatively prosperous and free place. But you can certainly recognize that in a world where a nation like Russia were to assume superpower status, the threat of nuclear terror, the threat of the loss of freedoms that we enjoy, could become reality.

You were asked today, and I’m sure you’re asked often, about your religion [Romney is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints]. Are you tired of that question?
No. I think it’s just a part of the political process. You want to get to know everything about a candidate, and my religion is not terribly well known by most folks, so they want to ask questions.

How important do you think it is to being president?
It could be important if someone had values that were very different than American values. Fortunately, I think people who take a look at me, and see my family and know my faith, recognize that my values are American as anywhere in this country.

You father ran for president in 1968. How’s this campaign different from your father’s? Did you campaign for him?
I was serving my church in France on a mission. I did not experience the campaign first-hand. My father wrote a long letter every week describing what was going on, and so I experienced it from afar. I can’t tell the biggest difference. One enormous difference is the money. The campaign contributions limits on one hand, plus the huge spending required to be become a presidential contender, mean that you spend an enormous amount of your time raising money. And the influence of money in politics has gotten much much worse, and that’s bad for America. Other differences: the news cycle used to be once a day, now it’s all day long. There’s probably even more gotcha politics today than at that time, when people are looking for any way to disqualify someone, so you have to be careful.

How much do you have to curb your normal human instincts to say what you want?
The truth is that I don’t curb my enthusiasm as much as some suggest I might do. I pretty much say what I feel and now and then I have to acknowledge, oops, I made a mistake, I didn’t say [that] quite the way I meant to. And some people blow that out of portion and hit you with it. But by and large people forgive you for those human errors. One thing I’m more careful of is impromptu jokes. Trying to be funny on the spot can sometimes be offensive to someone and end up with an apology needed, so when I tell jokes they tend to be the tested, tried and true.

Do you have a most tired joke that you tell on the campaign?
I certainly do and I won’t tell it to you. What’s funny to me is that the joke that I like best and that I’ve told 200 to 300 times since January still gets the best response from the audience. I told it last night. When I said to Anne [his wife] that I was running for president, I said to her, sweetheart, in your wildest dreams did you see me running for president? And she said, Mitt, you weren’t in my wildest dreams. See, you laughed. I continue to tell that story because it gets such a good response.

Often, people blame Massachusetts people that move up here for ruining the traditions of the state. Being a governor of Massachusetts, how does that hurt you or help you?
I think it’s a plus for people to recognize that a guy that was born in Michigan, who’s been governor of Massachusetts, has a track record people understand here in New Hampshire. I have been watched from afar. And when people level their attacks at me, they tend to bounce off because they know better. They know I held in spending, they know I held down taxes, they know I worked hard to get insurance for our citizens, and so New Hampshire voters have had a better look at me than folks in, let’s say, Oregon, and I think that’s to my advantage. I also think it’s to my advantage to have a home here in New Hampshire and to be coming up here on weekends for some time.

You spend time in the winter there?
Now and then in the winter. My most embarrassing experience there was the first winter we owned the home. We bought it in the fall. We had some work done on the outside to change the covering. It used to be stucco, we changed it to shingle, and I wanted to see what it looked like from the water. The lake was frozen, but I didn’t know how solid the lake was in the winter at Winnipesaukee. So I got a ladder from the garage and laid it across the ice to spread my weight, and then I would move that ladder as I would move across the ice. After going about 200 to 300 hundred yards from shore I looked up and there was a pickup truck driving right by me. And I said OK, the ice is thick enough without a ladder [laughs].

What do you think the deciding factor is going to be in this election?
In the general election, if it’s me and Hillary, people are going to look at the two of us and say, who can keep America prosperous and safe. And I think I can win on that basis. I think it will be both the prosperity of our nation and the safety of our nation. I just don’t think that people are going to come away saying that she’ll make America stronger, safer and more prosperous.

You already foresee you and Hillary in the race?
Well, I certainly foresee myself in that position because I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think I couldn’t get there, and I think she is the most likely on the Democratic side, at least the indications on the early state polls would suggest that. I don’t pay a lot of attention to national polls; they don’t tell you a lot. But Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, South Carolina — she’s leading on those states, and that’s a pretty compelling lineup.

How early do you think this election will be decided?
I think theirs will be decided by Feb. 6 and ours could be as well.

—Brian Early