I don’t care how many Cadillacs Mitt Romney owns, how many earmarks he requested, or how many individual mandates he approved. This is an extraordinary man.
We first heard about it in the 2008 campaign: how Romney saved the teenaged daughter of a Bain Capital colleague in 1996. Here’s what Mitt did when he learned the girl had gone missing after sneaking from her home in Connecticut to a party in New York City: he shut down the whole office and flew the staff from Boston to New York; he had fliers printed up and got employees at Duane Reade (in which Bain invested) to stuff one into every customer’s bag; he set up a phone hotline; he personally, along with his Bain people and their New York accountants and lawyers, pounded the city’s pavements looking for the girl and asking teenagers if they’d seen her. After a few days of all this – and the publicity it generated – they traced the hotline call of someone asking for a reward and found the girl, who had overdosed on Ecstasy, in the basement of a New Jersey home.
The New York Times is treating the campaign’s current retelling of the story with predictable snide cynicism (“Pressed for Anecdote, Romney Recounts Tale of Missing Girl”); and — surprise, surprise – is trying to gin up some controversy around the ad one of his super PACs is running about it.
The Washington Post describes it thus: “Mitt Romney is striving to show voters that he is more than the Mitt Romney they think they know. He wants to demonstrate that he’s human, too.”
Um. He is? Really?? Who’d have thunk???
Now, I’ve been working for a few decades, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have some really nice bosses and colleagues. But I can’t imagine a single one of them going so far just to help me – not to mention having the calm wherewithal to come up with a workable and effective plan. And I can’t quite imagine our great philanthropists Warren Buffett and Bill Gates doing it either. Or even that paragon of humanness, Barack Obama himself.
Yes, it’s true that the campaign is using the story to counter the rich-technocrat Romney caricature promoted by opponents on the left and the right. But that’s what campaigns are supposed to do, isn’t it? One can only wonder why it’s taken them so long. Could it be a certain – gasp – modesty on the part of the candidate? Or possibly a reluctance to parade the teen trauma of someone who may well be a happy and healthy young woman today? I wouldn’t be surprised.
Mitt Romney isn’t just human; he’s a very good, decent human. And we could do much, much worse than that in a president.
Great story.
Does this behavior as admirable as it is indicate how Romney perceives his relationship and his obligations to colleagues who aren't vested limited equity partners, let alone mere employees? In its way it is quietly heroic but don't count on Gov. Romney showing the same solicitude to the servant classes. The notion that we voters have a personal stake in any of these self-promoters and hustlers, Obama, or Cain, or Palin, or Santorum or Romney is sweet. How many more politicians will we take seriously who run as "outsiders" to "reform the system" by, oh gosh, elevating themselves to the most powerful elective office in the nation?
With bitterness and alienation like yours, it sounds like you're going to be voting for Gollum from Lord of the Rings.
At least for me, the point here isn't only his solicitude but also his problem solving skills.
So in essence you make the case that we do want a more limited government . . n nWho is going to do that if we don't teach, mentor, and promote moral citizens who spend their lives as servant leaders . . people who make a lot of impact or money legally if not morally, and then give it and their time liberally toward their own communities. n nThat isn't a cynic who complains and points fingers and follows ANY ideology without volunteer service to community . . it is the serious, skilled person who sounds a LOT like Mitt Romney.
This is but one anecdote of Mitt's uniformly wholesome character. Have you wondered why there are not attack ads from people who worked with him, worshipped with him, and worked for him? The closest attack ad that I am personally aware of is the one ran by Ted Kennedy by a woman who claimed that Mitt had encouraged her to not have an abortion while serving as a lay church leader. Wow, imagine encouraging someone to bring a life into the world! nThe Left's most effect attack on Mitt is that he is "not like us." He is too intelligent and affable, his wife too perfect, and his children are too All American. Rather than highlighting the story of a man whose father came from poor circumstances in Mexico and made the most of the American dream and then went on to get a JD and law degree from Harvard while raising a young family– taking the opportunities his father and America had offered him and maximizing it– the press attacks Mitt for being "not like us." Lobsters in a pot.
Bravo, Naomi. I think Romney is a truly remarkable man. Extremely competent, profoundly decent, and possessed of a presidential temperament and personality. Among all the presidential candidates and including Obama, he has by far been the most generous in his charitable giving, well beyond the donations he makes to his church. His charity BEYOND his church exceeds the percentage of income than any other candidate has given. And he is the most competent and capable Republican nominee for president in many, many years.
Proving that only character matters IMO. The rest, the business and economic acumen, the conservative living style (no sunglasses and yachts on the Riviera) the heart and the energy to go through this awful primary process and the attacks he faces are just added bonuses. n nWe get the president we deserve. I hope we collectively deserve Mitt and not another obama term . Even the poor with safety nets can't afford obama–he cut the Heat assistant program by half and will do more plus raise middle class taxes in a next.
Wow! Great story. I never heard that before. Definetely increases my respect fro Mitt.
Mitt is indeed an extaordinary man. He may not come from the area, culture, or class level that many voters are but most extraordinary people aren't just Joe-next-door. n nMitt is the real deal and that rarest of all birds, a modest achiever. I believe him when he says he would want us all to be ruch.
Like Mitt Romney, Jimmy Carter was an undistinguished, one term governor, with a poor prospect of re-election. Like Mitt Romney, Jimmy Carter was thought to be very intelligent, able, data-driven, steady, and disciplined – a problem-solving manager. Like Mitt Romney, Jimmy Carter had no significant foreign policy experience, prior to becoming the POTUS, nor did he have any experience in national politics, prior to becoming the POTUS. But unlike Jimmy Carter, Mitt Romney has had no military experience. n nSo, what qualifies Mitt Romney to be the POTUS?
Robert,r nr nYou forgot to add, like Jimmy Carter, Romney also has two eyes, two lips, and a nose.r nr nUnlike Carter, Romney has surrounded himself with conservative advisors. Unlike Carter, Romney has a successful history as a problem solving business executive.
First of all, Carter wasn't successful at much in his life. Period. There's no Bain Capital or something minor like the World Olympics in Cater's background. There's engineering- as a daughter of a brilliant engineer, I can attest that most are not near as clever as they think they are, and most could never survive running any business. Also, the fact Carter was an engineer should have raised serious flags not only on the nerd front but also on the lack-of-social understanding front (doesn't everyone read Dilbert?). Last, though it doesn't constitute foreign policy in a specific governmental role, Romney is one of the few candidates in modern history who has lived abroad, speaks another language fluently, and has had extensive international business relationships- unlike Obama who had nothing, zip, nada. Carter also had nothing like that then, and has nothing like that now.
Something approaching double the votes of his competitors, as a start . . with no *proven* disqualifications just like the person he'll meet in the general election. n nInteresting the other candidates never call them anti-not Romney votes . . they say they have the anti-Romney vote instead of the pro-themselves votes. Some kind of envy . . n nYour outline above is summarily dismissive, just as Gingrich does in calling Romney a competent manager. But the OP is an example of a leadership that completely shatters such bias. A bias which gives no value to a stellar career in turning around huge problems people with biases built for us instead of using their position to create value for we the people. n nAs I look at it, we have no chance that Obama, Gingrich, or Santorum can identify, much less start the many changes needed to right the ship of our federal government. As an independent, I don't know that Romney will deliver, but I see a much better shot than with anybody else. Paul has a more desirable fiscal ideology, but he doesn't know how to get things done . . and he's almost as scary as Obama on foreign relations (because of what he doesn't say, perhaps). n n
Don't be so hard on Obama. If he were in the same situation he undoubtedly would have formed a committee to study the problem and report back to him, then he would have named a czar for locating lost people, then he would have gone on TV and read a speech from his teleprompter calling for greater spending on manhunt initiatives, then he would have blamed the Koch brothers and Rush Limbaugh for the girl being missing, then he would have leaked to a friendly reporter that he called the mother and father of the girl on the phone and spoke to them for 10 — ten! — minutes, then he would have invited one of the unionized rescue workers searching for the girl to sit in a balcony box with the First Lady at his next State of the Union address. Yep, Obama would really have gotten to the bottom of that problem, and fifteen months and $1.6 billion later the girl would still be missing.
I have long said that this was the James G. Blane v. Grover Cleveland primary — and I can see Blane doing the 19th Century version of that, I would actually be surprised if he didn't. n nI also know a lot of guys (and gals) who get out of bed in the middle of the night, go out into sometimes nasty weather, and then either go cut someone out of a wrecked car or try to put out the fire in someone's house. They don't get paid a penny for this, and have to show up in work tomorrow with bloodshot eyes and somehow make it through the day.
Obama killed Osama, and that is an extraordinary man.
Obama killed Osama, that is an extraordinary man.
Even Mitt's most ardent detractors do not contest that he is a decent family man.