Mitt Romney’s dad George was too perfect to be president in 1968

(This post, originally published at StandardNET, was written in 2010, long before Mitt Romney's unsuccessful 2012 bid for the presidency.)

The Spring 1971 BYU Studies journal has an interesting article. Titled, “The 1968 Presidential Decline of George Romney: Mormonism or Politics?,” it’s an interesting look at the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney’s father (seen above). The elder Romney was as an attractive a candidate in 1967 as his son was 40 years later. They were both very handsome and about the same age when they ran. The elder Romney never ran for the presidency again. He served in President Richard Nixon’s cabinet for one term.

It’s popular today to assign Romney’s relatively early demise in the 1968 presidential derby to the bad publicity resulting from his claim that he was “brainwashed” into supporting the Vietnam War by U.S. military, but writer Dennis L. Lythgoe disagrees. Romney’s perfect persona was disconcerting to many voters, Lythgoe asserts. The American electorate may not have bought a used car from a man like Richard Nixon, but they were more apt to vote for Tricky Dick than for auto executive George Romney, who had revolutionized the auto industry by pushing compact cars onto the market.

Mixed in with Romney’s “perfectness” was a piety that disquieted voters. Romney’s campaign took issue with the declining morals of a nation. His stump speech, according to Lythgoe’s reporting, involved the “nation’s six declines: religious conviction, moral character, quality of family life, the principal of individual responsibility, patriotism and respect for law.”

Yet George Romney lacked passion detailing these issues. He also didn’t appear to have a great command of the issues. Voters sensed a vagueness from Romney on the issues. I’ve read “Nixonland,” by Rick Perlstein, which covers the early mid-1960s to early ‘70s and my hunch is that Romney simply wasn’t as Machiavellian as Richard Milhouse Nixon. Romney appears to have been asking Americans to be more decent. However, Nixon was pointing at other Americans and saying, “you are more decent than those people.” Nixon used division, scapegoats and created faux victims to boost his political fortunes. George Romney doesn’t appear to have been capable of that vilification.

It would be impossible today for any Mormon to be a serious contender for the presidency if the church still barred black males from holding the priesthood. Surprisingly, though, it doesn’t seem to have been the biggest barrier to Romney’s campaign. There were lots of news articles about the LDS Church’s blacks and the priesthood policy during that election cycle, and the elder Romney was criticized often for it, but his strong support for civil rights as governor of Michigan diluted much of the bad publicity that might have resulted. However, one must also factor in that 42 years ago we were a less racially tolerant society than we are now.

In the 1960s, George Romney was not shy about claiming that he consulted God about all major decisions. According to Lythgoe, he reportedly prayed to God for guidance prior to his decision to run for governor of Michigan in 1962.

It would be interesting today to track the fortunes of a presidential candidate who made those same statements. President George W. Bush was criticized for his reliance on God’s counsel, but it didn’t stop him from serving eight years in office.

Despite his piety, Romney was considered a moderate, even a liberal Republican. In what would make a Beck 9/12 member gasp, he cited progressive Teddy Roosevelt as a hero. Yet he lost badly, apparently failing to grab the blue collar middle class workers who boosted Nixon. Lythgoe cites three main reasons for Romney’s loss: “his vagueness on the issues; the Negro Doctrine of the Mormon Church; and his piety.”

Reporters came to believe that he did not have deep enough knowledge of the national scene, especially foreign affairs, to handle himself effectively on the political stump,” he writes.
Finally, the “fear that he believed himself to be divine and therefore incapable of error produced new frustrations in the voters,” added Lythgoe.

Was Romney the first perfect politician? Was that “perfection” also a problem with his son Mitt? In my opinion, the younger Romney is an overwhelming favorite to grab the GOP presidential nod in 2012. It will be interesting to see how the son fares in a challenge his father never undertook.

-- Doug Gibson