From doubts to confidence to defeat
By Dan Balz, WashPost, Updated: July 27, 2013
Adapted from “Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America,” by Dan Balz. The book is due out Aug. 6.
Mitt Romney sat in an armchair at his home in Belmont, Mass., dressed in blue jeans and a checked shirt. It was late January 2013, almost three months after voters rejected his bid for the White House, and the next hour and a half marked the first time he had talked to a reporter about the campaign. I asked him what made him want to be president and why he thought he didn’t become president.
“I wanted to be president because I believe that my background and experience and my perspective and point of view would be helpful to get America back on track, to keep America the economic powerhouse it’s been and the champion of freedom here and around the world,” he said. “I happen to believe that America is on a course of decline if it continues with the policies we’ve seen over the last couple of decades, and we need to take a very different course, returning to more fundamental principles, if you will.”
I asked whether part of his decision to run was an effort to fulfill an ambition that his father, the late Michigan governor George Romney, never did. “I love my dad,” he said. “It’s fair to say that I probably would not have thought of politics had I not seen my mom and dad involved in politics. . . . But my decision to run for office was really in no way a response to my father’s campaign. It was instead a recognition that, by virtue of a series of fortunate events, I was in a position to run for president and potentially become president. And I felt if I didn’t do so, given that opportunity, I would have been letting down my country, my family and the future.”
(More here.)
Adapted from “Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America,” by Dan Balz. The book is due out Aug. 6.
Mitt Romney sat in an armchair at his home in Belmont, Mass., dressed in blue jeans and a checked shirt. It was late January 2013, almost three months after voters rejected his bid for the White House, and the next hour and a half marked the first time he had talked to a reporter about the campaign. I asked him what made him want to be president and why he thought he didn’t become president.
“I wanted to be president because I believe that my background and experience and my perspective and point of view would be helpful to get America back on track, to keep America the economic powerhouse it’s been and the champion of freedom here and around the world,” he said. “I happen to believe that America is on a course of decline if it continues with the policies we’ve seen over the last couple of decades, and we need to take a very different course, returning to more fundamental principles, if you will.”
I asked whether part of his decision to run was an effort to fulfill an ambition that his father, the late Michigan governor George Romney, never did. “I love my dad,” he said. “It’s fair to say that I probably would not have thought of politics had I not seen my mom and dad involved in politics. . . . But my decision to run for office was really in no way a response to my father’s campaign. It was instead a recognition that, by virtue of a series of fortunate events, I was in a position to run for president and potentially become president. And I felt if I didn’t do so, given that opportunity, I would have been letting down my country, my family and the future.”
(More here.)
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