"...when I was governor a couple of years, around 2004..."
when I was governor a couple of years, around 2004,"
WTF, Mittens.. can't you remember that far back?
very interesting article.
Run, Little Mitt, Run!
Yes, it seems that Mitt Romney has been running for president forever. But we did some digging, and you don't know the half of it. As Robert Draper discovered, Romney has been driven by a force larger than himself for a very long time
by Robert Draper
April 1, 2012
"I never imagined that I would be running for president of the United States.... I spent my life in business. I sort of backed into getting involved in politics."—Mitt Romney, Council Bluffs, Iowa, January 2012
On July 4, 1962, 15-year-old Mitt Romney delivered his first-ever stump speech. The venue was a high school football stadium in Lansing, Michigan, where his father, George, was campaigning for governor. Someone informed the candidate that he was way behind schedule and needed to depart for another event. But, campaign staffers fretted, who would speak to the crowd in George Romney's place?
See a Young Romney's Article in Read
"I wasn't nervous—just panicky," young Mitt later wrote for Read, a biweekly youth magazine. "Luckily I had about five minutes during another person's speech to try to think of something to say.... Naturally, the minute I stood up at the microphones, everything I'd thought of dropped out of my mind.... But once I got the first words out, it wasn't bad at all. I talked about ten minutes on what the Fourth of July meant to me, and the people seemed to like it. One thing is sure; I never realized before how tough it is to be a candidate."
snip
The more Mitt Romney has immersed himself in politics, the more vigorously he has peddled the narrative—what Newt Gingrich has termed "pious baloney"—that politics was just something that the life-long businessman stumbled into, more or less in the manner of a fellow who strolls into his local diner for a cup of coffee in the middle of a stickup and is thereupon transformed, albeit reluctantly, into a civic hero. Romney's selective elucidation of his own biography seems of a piece with his fuzzy ideology. As one of his former senior advisers admits, "Mitt's flaw is authenticity. Someone who changes his mind can be effective as a business leader or running the Olympics. But when you change your mind on such core issues as abortion, then what? Where's the authenticity?"
Romney's story line has undergone a few crucial revisions. As recently as February, he told supporters in Nevada, "I never imagined I would one day run for president of the United States," but back in December 2007 he had a different recollection when I asked him when he first thought about taking up residency in the White House. "It was probably, oh, back when I was with Senator [Bob] Bennett of Utah after the Olympics, when I was governor a couple of years, around 2004," he replied. "He just said to me, 'Y'know, you don't have to decide if you want to be president. But you do have to decide if you want the option to become president.'
snip
Read More http://www.gq.com/news-politics/politics/201204/mitt-romney-republican-primary-gq-april-2012#ixzz20WbDhS4i
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