Mitt Romney’s son Tagg told the Boston Globe that his father didn’t really want to be president that much.
No one wanted to be president less than Mitt Romney, his son said in an interview out Sunday that raises new questions about the candidacy of the losing Republican nominee.
In an interview with the Boston Globe examining what went wrong with the Romney campaign, his eldest son Tagg explains that his father had been a reluctant candidate from the start.
After failing to win the 2008 Republican nomination, Romney told his family he would not run again and had to be persuaded to enter the 2012 White House race by his wife Ann and son Tagg.
“He wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my life. He had no desire… to run,” Tagg Romney said. “If he could have found someone else to take his place… he would have been ecstatic to step aside.”
Mitt Romney “is a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them. He loves his country, but he doesn’t love the attention,” his son said.
Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and multi-billionaire businessman, has been widely criticized for blaming his loss in the November 6 election on President Barack Obama’s “gifts” to Latinos, women and the poor.
“What the president’s campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote,” Romney said during a call with campaign donors in mid-November that represented his first public reaction to his election loss.
The Globe story sought to look beyond that narrative and examine what really went wrong.
It focused on the fact that Romney was unhappy that one of his most trusted advisers, Mike Murphy — the architect of his successful 2002 run for governor of Massachusetts — did not join the campaign.
Instead, the campaign settled on Stuart Stevens, who had worked on Romney’s 2008 presidential bid.
The Globe story also highlights the decision to downplay Romney’s biography in favor of going after Obama and the flagging US economy.
The guy spends a billion dollars, travels the country coast to coast several times, nearly kills himself with exhaustion, and opens himself to personal criticism of the most vile sort, and yet he didn’t want the job?
We are extremely fortunate Mitt Romney was not elected. What kind of job would Romney have done as president if he didn’t want it in the first place?
On the other hand, maybe the presidency is the sort of job where anyone who actually wants it should not be trusted with it. Where is Cincinnatus when we need him?
Right! I believe Mitt Romney ran for pure love of country, because he knew he had the skills set to turn this whole mess around, and not for power, control, or self-aggrandizement.
As for “nearly killing himself with exhaustion,” when I looked at him I saw a person who presented the antithesis of that. Furthermore, had he been given the Office, I’m quite sure people half his age would have been severely pressed to keep up with him. His hallmark has always been giving his all. What on earth would lead anyone to think he’d slack off in the most important job on the planet?!
Indeed.
We currently have someone who wanted the job for the power and prestige and we see how well that is working out.
Exactly right. He would have been a good President – and part of the reason is that very reluctance. It is those whose lives are so empty and meaningless that they thirst for power over others that make bad Presidents – the current resident being a perfect example.
My opinion: Romney ran because of his profound love of country, not because he wanted to be president. He ran to DO something, not to BE something. He hoped to save this country from disaster. He would have made a fine president. His values- hard work, responsibility, service, civic duty, etc., would have been a truly welcome change.
Hell NO.
The fact that Mitt Romney ran because of his FAMILY’S ambitions rather than his own is no recommendation whatsoever.
It merely shows that he never had any spine.
But then, I could have told you that.
That’s why I think psychological testing and screening should be mandatory for ALL federal level politicians, judges and upper level bureaucrats. If many federal agencies and parts of the military require such testing, why not the politicians who are in position to cause vastly more mischief?
“What kind of job would Romney have done as president if he didn’t want it in the first place?”
Better’n the dope that DID win, but not as good as Senator Rick Santorum would have.
Ahhh, but YOU were one of the ones pontificating that Romney was “the Electable One”
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/12/romney_still_the_most_electable_republican.html
Maybe you aren’t as well-informed as you have been told that you are?
How does it feel to be PWN3D by the “Republican McGovern” that you were pushing on us?
Hey, just a suggestion…next time around, confine your input to telling people what is wrong with whatever freak or weird that the Democrats excrete for their nominee, okay?
You won’t end up looking like a fool that way.
He could not possibly have done a worse job than the current office holder.
That’s true – but it’s also completely irrelevant.
The reason that the RINOs anointed Romney with the nomination is precisely BECAUSE they knew he was the one candidate who could never win the general election.
In other words, with their endorsements and contributions, they paid for him to go out there and take a dive, because they knew that he didn’t want the job enough to fight for it.
That’s why the left-wing MSM made such an effort to portray Romney as the one GOP candidate that Obama was afraid of. In reality, Romney was the only candidate that Obama had no reason to fear.
I was answering a direct question posed in the original column. If you think that’s irrelevant you can take it up with Moran.
I didn’t,t think he felt the presidency, was worth fighting for, and I was very disappointed in his performance, in spite of that ,me, (and my spouse )maxed out the contributions to his campaign. So Mitt can we have our money back? We still have four more kids to put through college, (and if you didn’t,t think this country was worth fighting for, you shouldn’t,t have taken the job.) I am more than just a little disillusioned, with the Republican party, and I won,t be sending them any more of my hard earned money, for a long time if ever. I am giving up on the whole game, and am going to start looking out for my own best intrest from now on. If the country is this far gone, I,d better start getting ready for the end game.
Ditto.
It’s either secession or emigration, and I’m too old to wait for secession to happen.
Better to have had King Log (Romney) rather than King Stork (Obama).
Not too long ago, the sadly now outdated attitude expressed by the sentence,
” MayberryLady
Right! I believe Mitt Romney ran for pure love of country, because he knew he had the skills set to turn this whole mess around, and not for power, control, or self-aggrandizement.”
….used to be called the very patrician, “noblesse oblige”.
But, instantly nowadays, anything at all done selflessly “noble” and (gasp!)not done for personal reward is hooted at and scorned. It’s so,”…. like, stooopit, man, Dude, like, what’s he, like, been sMOKin’?, man…..”
Unfortunately, that’s the entitlement mindset that’s taken hold of our culture. The exemplar of this, of course is the shallow chameleon named Obama. Remember that 53% of the voters now seem have this newly entrenched mindset, and it isn’t going away. That’s our emerging tragedy.
To me, everything nowadays seems as if it’s being seen and measured via looking at a Salvador Dali landscape.
However, whatever bad happens now, that smarta*s Obama owns it.
Closely related, with this in mind Dear Readers, do not take your attention away from Benghazi. This is impeachment material awaiting disclosure.
You make some good points. Except, Bush and Romney were both patrician, and noblesse oblige can be an honorable thing until you enter government service. Then it’s on MY DIME. And that’s a big problem. Do all the good works you want with your family money. Don’t be raiding the public coffers to assuage your wealthy person guilt and to show others what a swell caring Republican you are. Democrat-Lite with public money is not honorable.
Real men often do things out of sense of duty they have little desire to do otherwise.
And more often than not, real men do these things to the best of their ability.
Beautifully and very powerfully expressed.
This article pegs my bullshit meter.
The response to it in this comment section breaks the poor meter.
Unfortunately “Scholar”, your talent, aptly and too often demonstrated judgment, and credibility are null and void. Therefore your “meter” irrelevant and to be mocked.
“We are extremely fortunate Mitt Romney was not elected. What kind of job would Romney have done as president if he didn’t want it in the first place?”
That is an absolutely mindless statement! If you actually believe that, you are beyond stupid. So we’re fortunate that the communist SOB that Soros’ Cabal props up is still in charge? We’re fortunate that the federal bureaucracy is being systematically seeded with leftists? We’re fortunate that the US Government is pouring money into the pockets of unions and other leftist front groups? We’re fortunate that the US Government is busily removing all authority from the states? We’re fortunate that the US military is being systematically gutted. We’re fortunate that North Africa and soon the Levant is being turned over to the Muslim Brotherhood and Israel faces nuclear anniliation? Good to hear we’re so damned fortunate!
I doubt it. You don’t run for president for 8 years and spend about a hundred million of your own money if you don’t want it. The kid should have said it for the entire Republican establishment.
What they want is to continue feeding at the government trough.
– he was vicious enough to his Republican rivals.
Romney’s attitude would not have changed his presidency much. He’s non-idealogical. He would have staunched the spending bleeding, but not treated the cause of the hemorrhage.
His attitude towards the presidency would have the same result as his lack of conservative idealogical conviction.
Clinton’s relative lack of liberal ideology blunted his power grabs. Obama, on the other hand, has the full strength of his conscious behind his destruction of financial and religious liberty.
To finish, this past election convinced me that Romney is a good man, deserving our respect. Obama ran one of the most severe character assassinations in recent memory; based on people’s prejudices.
Then why the @#$!! couldn’t Tagg and his mother have taken No for an answer?
He got into the race, sucked all the air out of the nomination contest, let people market him as Electable and Inevitable, won the nomination, and lost to Obama.
I say crock.
There was nothing fortunate about 2012. If he didn’t want the job he should have stayed out of it and let someone else take on Obama — someone who would have actually run against the little god-king like he meant it.
For a guy that ‘didn’t really want to be’ potus he certainly did his best to elbow some guys that were running hard for the job. He fooled me – right up until he was the last man standing.
I just wonder what was in it for him to throw the race the way he did.
He is a Rockefeller Republican that didn’t want one of those nasty conservatives to win the primary. Then he wanted to lose with dignity like McCain did. Big government Republicans are all too happy to stand by and let Democrats enlarge the government for them and their inevitable return to power.
1) This article is bullshit. He didn’t throw the race.
2) The part of PJ media that thinks that Michelle Bachmann was a good candidate who could ever in a billion year win, is stupid. Oh right the word is 5000 years old, so I should have said “could ever win in 5000 years.” I stand corrected! The part of PJ media that thinks that Ron Paul was a good candidate… Dod, do I have to continue? Y
ou conservatives insist on candidates who don’t like most Americans and who most Americans don’t like. You should look up the word “democracy.”
“world” not “word”
DOH!
The Founding Fathers were quite familiar with the word “democracy”.
They chose specifically to give us a republic. A form of government that seeks to protect the rights of the people, rather than indulge in mindless majority rule….
Just so.
This paints events in a different light considering what happened in this election.
Romney didn’t want to really be president, at least according to his son, so why did he run in the first place?
If he didn’t want to be president, and had to be talked into it, then why did he compete so vigorously in the primary?
That very energetic primary campaign knocked out all of the other candidates – men who seriously DID want the job, and were qualified to perform in that capacity.
Romney’s personal views on social issues rightly judged him to be quite liberal. RINO quality liberal, in point of fact.
And still, the Republican establishment, with cheerleaders like this author and Ann Coulter (does the word “electableL ring a bell?) Couldn’t tell us often enough how great a candidate Romney was.
Oh, and let’s not forget, the ONLY candidate with more baggage where Obama where health care mandates (Romneycare, anyone?), ends up being the one candidate that all of the Republican establishment trips over each other to get behind!
And lordy, don’t forget how Karl Rove and his various organizations and the organizations he was associated with milked the presidential run for all it was worth. He got very wealthy off of all of this.
And of course who can overlook Boehners sucking performance in the House of Representatives?
It really is all kabuki theater – and we were the rubes.
At this point I regret changing my party affiliation this past July. I see no reason to keep supporting the Republican party.
Good luck to them in future elections, as I suspect their party base will now abandon them.
I don’t think he had a clue, or was willing to believe, what the GOP had become until well into the campaign, probably during the primary debates which was to late to pull out.
Who, with great personal integrity and dignity, would want to be president of a nation whose economy is tanked and the government in such debt not to mention involved in wars and conflicts around the world and — at the same time trying to deal with a party so decimated and at war waged by a minority radical faction within. I have no doubts he was glad to have lost.
I only wish he and his family well.
You weren’t paying attention. Romney’s campaign was based on having no policie, but lifting whatever talking points could be rescued from internet sewers and cleaned up enough to not sound like nazism. Romney pandered on everything, told every lie and pulled stunts like talking in front of the NAACP so that he could call black people parasites for wanting health insurance – he even told them to vote for Obama.
Romney may have spent his career being a middle of the road cypher, but in this campaign he embraced the worst trends in the Republican party and ran as the shit on the bottom of my shoe.
You weren’t paying attention. Romney’s campaign was based on having no policie, but lifting whatever talking points could be rescued from internet sewers and cleaned up enough to not sound like nazism. Romney pandered on everything, told every lie and pulled stunts like talking in front of the NAACP so that he could call black people parasites for wanting health insurance – he even told them to vote for Obama.
Romney may have spent his career being a middle of the road cypher, but in this campaign he embraced the worst trends in the Republican party and ran as the sh*t on the bottom of my shoe.
Josh Idiot, nobody missed your idiocy while you’ve been on sabbatical. Go away and hang out with other lefty idiots who might care what you think.
Most conservatives didn’t want Romney to run either. The media pushed Romney on us.
Most conservatives didn’t want Romney as their candidate. The media pushed Romney on us.
They simply told you the truth, that none of the other candidates had a chance in a general election. To win a general election you need policies that are acceptable to the majority of the people and you need to be liked by the majority of the people. But 2012 conservatism is based on wagging your fingers at the majority and rejecting them and their interests.
But Romney blew it because he was so desperate to win the primary that he went full bozo and staked out a position that couldn’t win in a general election.
“But 2012 conservatism is based on wagging your fingers at the majority and rejecting them and their interests.”
You are so profoundly, obstinately and aggressively ignorant that I don’t see how an actual conversation with you would be possible.
This is the final nail in the coffin proving the GOP leadership needs to go. Not only did they pick a loser in 2008, and nearly one with a second Bush term (Swiftboating was the only thing that defeated Kerry), but they picked the loser to the loser of 2008 this time around. Now he told them he didn’t want to run and they had to “persuade” him to run? That really helps explain why he tanked after the second debate.
I’m sure there are good candidates out there, ones that could have beaten Obama. However, between the GOP boss idiots, the RINOs, and the media slavishly devoted to Obama, they want no part of it. Hopefully some of them will come forward in the future after Obama and the Dems have made a police state version of Detroit out of the country and Obama foreign policy has set the world on fire.
If it were another generational time I would agree with you. All to draw from in these times is the boomer generation and the generation they’ve spawned. Both these generations will no doubt be recorded in the history books as the worst generations to date in American history.
“the worst generations to date in American history…”
Zeke, I just had to chime in to support your observation.
Isn’t it clear that the boomers have been and continue to be a disaster for our country?
It is perfectly obvious–if you dare to look.
“I blame the boomers” has been my refrain.
Any takers?
Can this news item possibly be construed as “true?” Especially with the vitriol, huge amounts of campaign spending, GoPacs, RNC/GOP gerrymandering, GOP re-districting committees, et all? Countless visits, re-visiting and re-re-visiting “battlegorund” states?
NAH! Was John McCains redux all over again. Anybody with a critical eye could see the sameness in Jonh McCains performances and carbon copy performances by Romney. Need Proof? Why, in Romney/Obama second debate didn’t Romney hit Obama on what every knowledgeable person knew???That 59% of America’s manufacturing capacity (in Obama’s three and a half years) were shipped overseas!!!HUH??? These are facts. Sure Obama hit on the “47%” video. Why didn’t Romney counter with the 95 million Americans already on some form of government assistance?? In just 3 years welfare rolls went from 37 million to over 46 million!!! NAH! John McCain redux! Romney’s campaign was doomed from the outset, for the same reasons McCains 2008 run was doomed…and almost fell apart at the seams TWO TIMES, too!
Just a mis-managed, screwed-up GOP/RNC top down, control freakish type campaingning…designed to keep “Center-Right” Tea Partiers at arm’s length, away from any decision-making what-so-ever…continues ’til today.Pray. Amen. Need Proof? Look at what Boehner just did!!!God Bless America.