Defining the Candidate

With a subprime mortgage crisis, plummeting stock market and rising economic insecurity, this might have been the year for a can-do CEO candidate with a reputation for fixing problems. Unfortunately, Mitt Romney ran as something else. What doomed him from the start, aides argue, was a campaign that did not define him early on as what he is: A manager with the skills and experience needed to steady the faltering economy. Instead, strategists say, precious time and money were wasted on a strategy that portrayed Romney as a social conservative without focusing on his accomplishments in the private sector, at the Salt Lake City Olympics and, later, as governor of Massachusetts.

"You always want to lead with your strong points and his strong points are his leadership ability, business skills and economic credentials," Romney's Iowa chairman, Douglas Gross, said. "No one knew who he was initially so if we could have defined him on his strengths … it could have worked." Gross added that if the campaign had chosen to deemphasize Romney's position on social issues such as abortion in Iowa, "then you would have avoided in your introduction a lot of this flip-flop stuff. … That became very difficult to overcome."

There was a great deal of debate within the campaign about how to define Romney for voters, aides say. The governor encouraged "rigorous discussion," but some aides say the campaign lacked a unifying vision. "What you need is one person with the strategic vision to make it happen," said one aide, who asked not to be identified. "And it can't be the candidate. People sort of relied on him to do that when he was the candidate—he's the performer, not the director. … You needed someone to pull it together and focus it from a communications and messaging standpoint and as a result the campaign wasn't as good as he is." Another adviser echoed that concern, saying, "There was no overarching strategist involved. … The media people became strategists in that void and that's a mistake because they're so in love with their own work they don't see the battlefield."

Romney was never able to drive home a positive message, strategists say, because his reputation for flip flopping on core conservative issues like abortion and same-sex marriage continued to dog him. When Romney ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, he pledged to protect a woman's right to choose. Romney later announced that upon further reflection, and at about the same time he decided to run for president, he had become pro-life. In the hours before Super Tuesday, he was telling voters about his deep-seated belief that abortion is murder. Appearing with ultra-conservative former Sen. Rick Santorum on Monday, Romney cracked that the thought of gay marriage would make the nation's founders turn in their graves. But the harder he tried, the more it appeared that he was trying too hard.

Romney's opponents seized on the theme that he was a flip flopper. Last June, when Romney addressed the National Right to Life Committee's annual convention in Kansas City, McCain attacked Romney for having the chutzpah to appear there as a former supporter of abortion rights, according to a Romney aide. "For the next three weeks all everyone talked about was abortion," the aide said. Social issues—and Romney's lack of bona fides on them—became a "dominant theme" of the campaign. Romney himself became aware that he had an image problem. In Iowa, some aides were pushing him to talk more about energy independence in the state, a major producer of ethanol. "He didn't want to do it because he thought people would see it as pandering," one aide said. 

He had other problems in the state, a critical launching pad to the nomination. Some 60 percent of Iowa's electorate is evangelical Christian and Romney's perceived lack of authenticity as a social conservative there was exacerbated by many voters' wariness of his Mormon faith. Mark DeMoss, who advised Romney on outreach to evangelicals, said that Romney never fully connected with conservative Christians. "We knew we had an obstacle to overcome with evangelicals and we overcame it some, but we didn't overcome it enough," DeMoss said. "I'm convinced that if Mitt Romney were Methodist or almost anything—fill in the blank—I believe he might have been the next president." DeMoss said that he faults evangelicals for backing Huckabee without knowing anything about him other than his religious affiliations. "I'm astounded at the number of evangelicals who are supporting Mike Huckabee who say, 'I'm supporting him because he's one of us,' and can tell you almost nothing else about him," said DeMoss, who is himself an evangelical. "That's a really troubling development."

Other aides say that Romney's financial advantages—while critical to his strategy—also created expectations that were difficult for a first-time candidate to live up to. Romney could buy the most high-profile strategists and a formidable field operation, leading to media hype. But at the same time, few voters had ever heard of him. "We were going against Rudy Giuliani who is internationally known, John McCain with 100 percent name ID, and Fred Thompson … who is famous," one top adviser said. "That was our most important challenge—it was an upstart campaign viewed by analysts and the media as a top-tier campaign with money, good people and a good candidate. Expectations were high. He had everything you needed, but the hardest thing to create is name recognition and awareness."

Many agree that Romney did everything he could control well—hire the best people, start early, organize efficiently—even as he was brought down by a string of bad luck. "If Fred [Thompson] hadn't pulled out of Iowa," adviser Ron Kaufman said, "it would have split up the vote Huckabee got and we would have won. If Rudy [Giuliani] hadn't decided to abandon the state we would have won New Hampshire. In Florida, if Rudy hadn't collapsed in the last four or five days and Mel [Martinez, a popular senator] hadn't endorsed McCain, we would have won." Unfortunately for Romney, those are all big ifs.