Mitt Romney: Like Father, Like Son
Jules Witcover

May 23, 2011

Forty-four years ago, Gov. George Romney of Michigan ran for president and in effect committed political hara-kiri with his own words. The other day in Michigan, his son, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, returned to the state of self-immolation bent on saving himself from the same fate.

The father in late 1967 killed his own presidential chances by saying on a Detroit radio talk show that he had been "brainwashed" by U.S. generals in Vietnam on how the war was going. The son on Thursday went to the University of Michigan avoid the same outcome. He tried again to explain that his own health care reforms as governor were not at all like what the junior Romney now repeatedly disparages as "Obamacare."

He reiterated his principal refutation of the allegation, that his plan requiring Massachusetts citizens buy health-care insurance was designed for his state only, rather than the general mandate in the Obama law Republicans now seek to repeal. "Our plan was a state solution for a state plan," Romney said. "His is a power grab by the federal government to put in place a one-size-fits-all system."

But President Obama is not letting Mitt Romney off the hook easily. He has jocularly commended him for enacting in Massachusetts an approach widely regarded as a model for the Obama plan he now attacks, and for backing away from his own version.

Romney said he was standing by what he had done in Massachusetts as right for the state but not for the nation. To calls on him to apologize for enacting it, he said: "There's only one problem with that. It wouldn't be honest. I did what I thought was right for my state."

The comment was in sharp contrast with a statement in the recent debate among five GOP presidential candidates, not including Romney, by former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. He apologized for once having support a cap-and-trade energy policy against party orthodoxy. "I don't try to duck it, bob it, weave it, try to explain it away. I'm just telling you I made a mistake," Pawlenty said then.

The confession 43 years ago of the late George Romney on being misled by the generals in Vietnam was more in the nature of Pawlenty's mea culpa than of Mitt Romney's rationale on how his health-care plan differed from Obama's. One likely result is that Romney will be haunted throughout the 2012 campaign on the issue. But his father's own mea culpa on his confused position on Vietnam nevertheless stuck to him until he bowed out of contention for the party nomination in early 1968.

In another way, Mitt Romney's current efforts to extract himself from a political tight spot caused by his past words mirrors the difficulty his father experienced in seeking to be taken as presidential material. George Romney's indecision on what American policy should be in Vietnam painted him in many eyes as unprepared to run the country, in spite of a strong record as a two-term governor.

At the time, Democratic Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, then challenging the renomination of President Lyndon B. Johnson and famous for his acerbic tongue, remarked of the brainwashing charge against the senior Romney: "I would have thought a light rinse would have done it."

While Mitt Romney also had an impressive record as a governor, his weak and somewhat confusing performance as a presidential candidate in 2008 has similarly raised doubts about his electability. Although the most recent Quinnipiac Poll has him leading the Republican pack, he draws only 18 percent of voters surveyed, not a resounding figure considering that as a second-time candidate he is hardly an unknown quantity.

At the same time, the son shares a generally personable aura that marked his father's own presidential bid. In the end, though, being a nice guy did not save George Romney from becoming a laughingstock as he tried feebly to deny the GOP nomination to the well-organized if not particularly admired Richard Nixon. But as of now, Mitt as the frontrunner faces no such seasoned opponent, a reed to which he can cling, so far at least.

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