In early June 1964, a group of Republican governors sought to wrestle control of their party from Barry Goldwater, the Arizona conservative who was about to lead the GOP to one of the most crushing defeats in its history. The governors saw a disaster in the making, and sought a moderate candidate who could capture the imaginations of grassroots Republicans—but also beat President Lyndon Johnson in the general election. Led by Ohio’s James Rhodes—the Republican Governors Association was meeting in Cleveland, and Rhodes was a legendary vote counter—the group included Pennsylvania’s William Scranton and later New York’s Nelson Rockefeller.
When Richard Nixon spurned their advances—after losing to John F. Kennedy in 1960, he had gone on to lose the California governor’s race in 1962 and was licking his wounds and perhaps already setting his sights on 1968—the group turned to Michigan’s George Romney, who considered the overture and then rejected it. Former President Dwight Eisenhower was on the fringes of the group—pushing but not dictating, afraid that Goldwater’s nomination would lead to electoral doom, which it did.
Fast-forward fifty years. Hugh Hewitt and I—both Romney supporters in 2012, with Hewitt openly supporting his election on the air and me serving as part of the campaign team—repeatedly, indeed inevitably, receive the same question when sitting down with politically active center-right conservatives, especially contributors who drive a lot of the early positioning of the GOP field: “Is Mitt running?”
This article, co-authored with Hugh Hewitt, was originally published in Politico Magazine, September 11, 2014.
Neither of us knew anything, and had not talked to the governor about it in the nearly two years since his defeat. He had said “No, no, no, no, no” enough times for us to hear clearly a firm and probably family-wide decision not to seek the 2016 nomination. This resolute rejection of speculation came despite the very strong polling afoot that would make him the prohibitive Republican front-runner amid a weak primary field, a ready-to-go campaign team, a financial network at least as powerful as Hillary Clinton’s, and great press from his nonstop, cross-country campaign for GOP candidates at all levels this summer.
But neither of us had asked the man himself. Pressed again and again by friends and colleagues, Hewitt decided to try. He succeeded on Tuesday, August 26, when Governor Romney returned to the air for an interview. Those twenty minutes—and Romney’s enigmatic “you know, circumstances can change, but I’m just not going to let my head go there”—sparked more reaction across more and varied platforms than any Hewitt has conducted in the fifteen years his nationally syndicated radio show has been on the air. Among the insider veterans of the 2012 campaign, the enthusiasm for another Romney run went from thirty-five miles per hour to eighty miles per hour, and I fielded numerous calls from the press, former Romney staffers, and major contributors on what the interview meant.
As with all things Romney, he meant what he said—that he thinks there are stronger candidates out there right now, but that circumstances can change. Pundits are left to speculate: What constitutes changed circumstances, and what would Romney do if confronted with the same choice his father faced in 1964? George Romney was a man whose word was his bond. He had committed to Michigan voters that he would finish his term, and that pledge held him back in 1964. No such chain binds Mitt Romney, and a close reading of his remarks on August 26 suggest the 2012 nominee knows his father’s history and the consequences of a refusal by a strong nominee to step up when called upon for the good of the party and the country.
Today, we don’t know what those changed circumstances are. We do know from our incoming calls that the many sound reasons being offered by his backers—reasons that reach far beyond the polls, fundraising capacity, and the generally 100 percent correct record of predictions Romney made in the fall of 2012 about where the country would be today—continue to fuel the Romney 2016 boom.
Among those arguments:
1. A third run doesn’t make a candidate the new “Stassen.”
Romney—a man who has always been successful in everything else he does—doesn’t want to be seen as repeat failure in politics. He himself referred to the “loser” tag in the Netflix documentary Mitt, which opened the eyes of many viewers to a Mitt Romney they had never glimpsed. Gone was the stiff, airbrushed candidate of his critics’ caricature; in its place was the real Mitt: a caring father, an earnest patriot, and a warm and funny person.
Certainly, Romney does not want to tarnish his impressive legacy, or his father’s, by launching a quixotic 2016 bid. Nor does he want to be the next Harold Stassen, the Minnesota governor who famously ran for president ten times beginning in 1940.
In truth, though, many, many candidates have enjoyed great success with their third run for the presidency (though only five—Richard Nixon, Grover Cleveland, William Henry Harrison, Andrew Jackson, and Thomas Jefferson won the presidency after having earlier been nominated for it and lost). Two more recent twice-nominated GOP candidates deserve our attention:
Thomas Dewey, the governor of New York, ran for president for the first time in 1940 at the age of thirty-eight. He was defeated in his quest for the GOP nomination by Wendell Willkie, who, in turn, lost the general election to President Franklin Roosevelt.
Dewey, following his loss in 1940, received the first of his two GOP nominations for president in 1944. This time, he defeated Willkie in the primaries, and, at the convention, dispatched his chief rival—none other than Harold Stassen. Dewey was defeated in the general election by Roosevelt, of course, but was re-nominated as the GOP standard bearer in 1948 and lost a general election to President Harry Truman that was so close it created an iconic moment in media history: In 1952, while still governor of New York, Dewey supported Eisenhower for president. When Eisenhower briefly considered retiring in 1956, Dewey—whose term had expired two years earlier—was Ike’s choice to replace him as president. Eisenhower recovered from health problems and ultimately decided to run again, and Dewey chose to pour his energies into his growing Wall Street law firm. President Lyndon B. Johnson subsequently offered him a seat on the Supreme Court, which Dewey declined in order to remain in private law practice.
Richard M. Nixon, a previous two-time vice-presidential nominee, received his first of two GOP nominations for president in 1960. He was defeated in the general election by John F. Kennedy by a razor-thin margin. Nixon ran for governor of California two years later, only to be defeated by Pat Brown. Dick Nixon’s political future was written off by everyone, including Nixon himself—but as early as 1964, party insiders were wooing him back.
Nixon, of course, did come back to win the presidency, albeit narrowly, in 1968. He literally began to reshape the world with his foreign policy achievements and was re-elected in a landslide in 1972. When he resigned the presidency two years later amid the Watergate scandal, he was thought finished on the national and international stage. In his globe-trotting retirement, however, he came to define the label “senior statesman,” proving that not just third but fourth and fifth acts are possible in American politics.
In sum, both of these repeat candidates went on to great success—in the private sector in Dewey’s case and in the public arena in Nixon’s. Neither man was a loser in any sense of the word.
Other major GOP candidates have sought the presidency in multiple campaigns and also found success in their post-third-run lives, even when they did not win:
Harold Stassen is generally held out as the personification of the perennial candidate and the butt of jokes in political circles. (The Milwaukee Journal noted a reporter asking at a Stassen press conference in the 1976 campaign: “Q. What politician believes Harold Stassen will be nominated? A. Harold Stassen.”) A few Romney foes are already trotting out the Stassen trope. This comparison is as unfair as it is superficial, and considers only Stassen’s late-in-life runs—not the four in which he was a serious candidate. A “boy wonder” of American politics, Stassen was elected governor of Minnesota at age thirty-one. His first three quests for the GOP nomination were very serious and credible. In 1944, he was a favorite-son candidate for the GOP nomination but was unable to campaign effectively, as he was serving as a US Navy captain in the Pacific. On his second run, in 1948, he was one of three GOP front-runners, together with Dewey and Senator Robert Taft of Ohio. Stassen defeated Dewey in several primaries and he was Dewey’s last major rival at the convention that year.
In 1952, in a third attempt at the nomination, Stassen was one of two GOP front-runners (the other being Taft) until Eisenhower joined the race. Stassen eventually ended his candidacy and supported Ike, serving as one of his chief campaign surrogates in the general election. Following Eisenhower’s election, he headed the Foreign Operations Administration and later served as special assistant for disarmament affairs, with cabinet rank. Even in 1964, some GOP voters considered him a palatable alternative to Goldwater.
Only after 1964 did Stassen became a punch line. But he remained active at the national level in his church, holding major positions in the Baptist Convention, and his international law practice in Philadelphia was successful. He retired to Minnesota, and his passing at age ninety-four in 2001 was reported with sympathetic national obituaries. He wasn’t a loser.
Ronald Reagan sought the GOP nomination three times, a fact that seems unknown to a younger generation of political pundits (as indeed, most of this history is). In his first national race in 1968, Reagan, then the governor of California, entered the contest late and was easily dispatched by Nixon.
In 1976, Reagan challenged incumbent President Gerald R. Ford for the Republican nomination. In one of the closest GOP nomination races in history, Ford narrowly defeated Reagan at the convention, but it was Reagan who had won the delegates’ hearts.
Still, four years later, Reagan’s age sent the party on a desperate hunt for an alternative. But he laughed off the speculation about his health and beat a strong field of contenders that included, among others, future President George H. W. Bush, future nominee Bob Dole and a behind-the-scenes effort to draft former President Ford into the race. Obviously, nobody would call Ronald Reagan—still one of America’s most popular presidents—a loser.
Bob Dole was the unsuccessful GOP vice-presidential nominee in 1976, running on the ticket with President Ford. He sought the Republican nomination for president the first time in 1980, only to earn less than 1 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary before dropping out and urging Ford to enter the race. In 1988, Dole ran for president again. Despite winning the Iowa caucuses and briefly leading the field, he lost the race to Vice President George H. W. Bush.
In 1996, Dole, by then the Senate majority leader, was the early front-runner in the GOP race, his third attempt at the nation’s highest office, and went on to win the Republican nomination before losing badly to incumbent President Bill Clinton. Following his defeat, Dole became a lobbyist at an international law firm in Washington and, of course, a beloved figure and spokesman for the Greatest Generation. He has served on many blue-ribbon commissions and is considered one of America’s leading senior statesmen by members of both parties. Not a loser.
2. Experience counts. A lot. More than anyone knows.
In Outliers, the New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell asserts, “The closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.” This is the famous “10,000 hours” rule, and—whatever its scientific validity—Romney is a poster boy for it. Maybe he wasn’t a natural pol, but after six years of national campaigning, his speeches and rallies in the waning days of the 2012 campaign had a Reaganesque feel. This summer, as he campaigns around the country for GOP congressional candidates, his confidence and skill on the trail are unmatched by anyone other than Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. Presidential campaigning is a learned skill, just like any other. If the candidate keeps growing, the skill set improves. First-timers rarely win the nomination, much less the election. Experience goes a long way.
It’s all the more important because Hillary Clinton’s presumed cakewalk to the White House is premised on nothing but her and her husband’s experience running for the office. They have a machine. It went off the rails in 2008, but only because Obama’s ascent was an extraordinary moment in American politics, and perhaps too because Team Clinton assumed too much about Hillary’s own inevitability. A 2016 run will, in effect, be Hillary’s fourth campaign for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Anyone who tells you a candidate for first lady isn’t running for office is not a serious pundit. The staffing, the strategy sessions, the fundraising, the debate prep—all that is almost as much a part of the spouse’s life as the candidate’s.
Hillary has run three times. This is a huge advantage. She knows the pitfalls. She knows whom to trust and whom to keep at a distance. She knows the media. She may have shown a little rust during her book tour, but come campaign season she will not be making rookie mistakes like forgetting that recording devices are everywhere and always listening.
For Romney, a third run would feature a far more confident and relaxed man—a 10,000-hour candidate. It is a good bet that Hillary fears a Romney three-peat more than she does the first-time national candidacy of any of the other potential GOP nominees.
3. The compressed primary schedule favors Romney. (Or maybe Ted Cruz.)
The pros know that Romney would have a huge advantage in 2016, given how the Republican Party has crunched its debate and primary/caucus schedule, whose long, rolling circus in 2012 was as damaging as it was entertaining—and given the weakness of the GOP field.
Yes, there is the “Ted X” factor. The junior senator from Texas has won the hearts of a large swath of the GOP because he is charismatic, combative, and talented. Ted Cruz’s skill set is uniquely ready for a ten- to twelve-debate GOP primary playoff. You don’t get to make nine Supreme Court arguments because you are lucky. Cruz has tapped into a deep desire among Republicans to confront the Obama legacy head on, and to fire all torpedoes at once.
Marco Rubio possesses similar rhetorical gifts, and has taken a key role leading the “peace through strength” wing of the party. Although some of the GOP governors eyeing the race have executive experience on their side, presidential nominations are theater, not deliberations, unless they get to a brokered convention—something that has not happened for well over half a century.
But here again, Romney has some advantages. Both Cruz and Rubio would be first-timers, subject to first-time errors and the fear factor so easily generated by a Hillary-enabling mainstream media. (Do you doubt that the media’s in the tank for Hillary? See the hard-hitting interviews that marked her book tour.) Further, President Obama’s stunning lack of competence in office may unfairly be used against these two highly talented junior senators, who have roughly the same amount of national experience now that Obama did when he ran as a first-term senator in 2008.
And maybe Romney wouldn’t even have to formally run. A brokered convention, as Hewitt has written elsewhere, might be within Romney’s control to dictate via a limited favorite-son campaign that puts his name into nomination in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Michigan, Utah, and California—all states where he has lived for long periods of time and accomplished much while living there, as well as the LDS-friendly states of Arizona, Nevada, and Idaho.
But limited or full throttle, Romney would have to say “yes,” not “circumstances can change” to set the wheels in motion. And we’re not the only ones counseling him to run, by the way. Many others are urging him get in the race, including his 2012 running mate Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz, and Joe Scarborough of Morning Joe. Romney’s family is as tightly knit as any we know. Some would love to see him run again; others are ambivalent. They all believe that Mitt would be a great president. If he decided to run again, Ann and his sons would campaign as energetically as ever. But it will be his choice. Although Romney has far more time than any other would-be candidate to announce his entry into the race, at some point following the midterm elections, Romney himself will have to say “go.”
What would make him do it? Romney knows the current crop of contenders stands little chance against Hillary. No doubt there are potential candidates—men he respects tremendously—who could give him pause.
These include Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who has been around four score and seven presidential debate preps, and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Both, however, have hurdles to plausibility. Governor Bush’s attachment to the Common Core education reforms and his position on immigration will draw strong attacks from Cruz and others in the conservative base. As for Portman, though he is a reliable and consistent conservative, his status as a longtime Washington insider could hurt him with primary voters in an anti-Washington cycle.
What about Governors Chris Christie of New Jersey and Rick Perry of Texas? Both were thought to be very strong candidates in the early primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina, and therefore roadblocks to a Cruz “running the table” moment. Now, no matter how unjust and politicized their persecutions, the pseudo-scandals drew blood, and the wounds will bleed for as long as investigations continue. The media will ensure that question marks hang over both men’s political futures unless they can button down those open-ended inquires very soon.
Which brings us back to Cruz. He looks very strong in Iowa—stronger than Iowa’s winner in 2008, former Senator Rick Santorum (who, let’s acknowledge, never had a real shot at winning the 2012 nomination). Cruz appears to be in at least in second place in New Hampshire (where Senator Rand Paul will have a devoted following of Yankee town-hall veterans who love his style). He probably enjoys a lead in deep-red and Tea Party-friendly South Carolina as well.
And Rubio? Could he hang on until the Florida primary and through the first Super Tuesday on March 1—where all contests must have their delegates proportionately allocated—or the second Super Tuesday on March 15, where the contests can be winner-take-all? Would a late rally to an establishment “not Cruz” candidate split the party too deeply for the disappointed followers of the Texan supernova?
Could that not-Cruz be a re-elected Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, or Ohio’s ebullient John Kasich? Kasich briefly considered a presidential run in 2000, and no one is as battle-hardened as Walker, though he faces his pesky own legal inquiries by partisan Wisconsin investigators. Both do have big fundraising chops.
Or what about Carly Fiorina? She’s almost certainly going to run as well, and who will keep her off the stage even as she drains some votes from the center-right, thereby assisting Cruz?
In his August 26 interview, Romney said he was already “defined” in America’s mind, and that this made it hard for him to run, implying a lot of difficult re-branding work, endless explanations and apologies for the “47 percent” comment, and pointing out that Romneycare worked as a limited, one-state exchange and was not the forerunner to the Obamacare fiasco.
But Romney would likely be facing an opponent in Hillary Clinton, whose State Department record is among the worst of all modern cabinet officers, with the terrible toll of her “reset button” mounting by the day. What is she going to tout as her big achievement? Burma?
Just look at the world—what Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gently calls “a mess,” but which is rather a cauldron of dangers and challenges. It is a far messier world than even the one Reagan faced upon assuming office in 1981. Obama’s incompetence will have meant eight years, not Carter’s four, to endanger global stability and hollow out America’s military.
And Hillary was right there with him. Meanwhile, Romney called every foreign policy fiasco we now face. Every one.
Nor is Hillary, for all her undeniable advantages, made of Teflon. She is brittle in interviews and does not have Mitt’s sprightly stride. She has been a Washington fixture since 1993. Romney has never lived there. And Romney at least admits to having money—something he earned it the old-fashioned way by buying and building companies, not by speculating in cattle futures, book deals, speaking engagements, or through the help of unnamed friends and the massively opaque Clinton Foundation.
If any appeal to Romney works, it will be one based on one of two recognitions by him. The first is that patriots are called to difficult things, even incredibly hard things. As Hewitt quoted to him in the recent interview, Thomas Paine wrote in December of 1776, at a low point for the new country, “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
Romney is no summer soldier, but he was very much a governor of Massachusetts, steeped in Revolutionary War writing and argument. Many, especially on the left, will think it corny, but an appeal to Romney’s patriotism should not be underestimated. The world really is a disaster, and Romney cares deeply about foreign policy—it’s been the focus of much of what he’s said and written since 2012. His concern about America’s deteriorating global position could be decisive in helping make up his mind.
The second argument is made from his father’s record and legacy. George Romney was as good and decent a man as American politics has produced in generations. If the family says to the governor, “Your dad would have run,” and they back it up with arguments about why Mitt is the man to rescue his country, circumstances will change very quickly.
If Romney saw that the GOP nomination were going to a candidate even more “defined” than he is and who is far less likely to win, would he feel the fabled sense of duty that animated his father and himself? Would Ann Romney, the boys and their wives, and Romney’s close circle of longtime friends be similarly moved?
We’ve heard Romney’s denials, most recently last weekend, when he said, “my time has come and gone.” But they are not Shermanesque. He commented to Fox News host Chris Wallace, “I’m not running. I’m not planning on running.” This accurately reflects the current status of his thinking and is consistent with his early statement to Hewitt that “circumstances can change.” And, it is clearly not General Sherman’s famous “I will not accept if nominated, and will not serve if elected.” After all, he keeps touring the country, speaking out against President Obama’s policies, and inspiring many Republicans who desperately want to win in 2016—and know that he can. Over the past month, numerous current and former Republican officeholders, officials, major contributors, and senior advisers have reached out to Romney by phone and e-mail and urged him to enter the race. They are staying on the sidelines until they are certain he will not run, which may be as late as next winter.
Imagine one interview from Romney, in which he says something like: “Circumstances can change, I’m best positioned to win, and the GOP nominee has to win—simply has to win. For the free world. For the Supreme Court. For people looking to protect their children’s futures. And, especially, for the men and women in uniform who deserve a commander-in-chief who will respect them, properly equip them, and lead them—from where America has always led—the front.”
Couple that interview or statement with the real Mitt Romney—the one from the documentary—speaking to the nation from the heart every day and on every stop. Match that Mitt against the polished and calculating Hillary Clinton. Well then, as Paul Ryan said, the third time really could be the charm. Romney may still do this: 2016 needs Mitt even if Mitt doesn’t think he needs it—yet. 