Growing up the youngest son of a wealthy businessman and political celebrity can be a trial. Yet people who have known Romney since boyhood said he didn't trade on his famous name.
But Romney was well aware of his father's role as president of American Motors, and then as governor. He joined him on trips, sat in on some of his meetings. And listened. And learned.
"As a little boy, Mitt loved to read the Automotive News, and he'd read it with Dad, about how the sales were going and which cars were doing well," Scott Romney said. Mitt Romney joined in wide-ranging family discussions at the dinner table about politics, the business climate and family plans.
"When Dad was talking about making a decision about whether he was going to do this or Mother was going to do that, Mitt was the one that always asked the most penetrating questions," the brother said.
The relationship between George and Mitt was strong. When, after a year at Stanford University, the son went to France for his two-year Mormon mission, the father took Mitt's girlfriend, Ann Davies, daughter of the local mayor, under his wing, according to past profiles of Romney. The son had trouble winning converts in France; the father to wrote him telling him not to worry -- he had converted nearly the entire Davies family back in Michigan. And when Mitt Romney returned home, he and Ann became engaged within hours.
George Romney was, for his era, moderate to liberal and was in many ways an agent for change within his party. His stances for civil rights and, later, against the Vietnam War put him at odds with the very people whose political support he curried. And he was inflexible in his beliefs -- a trait Mitt Romney hasn't shared. As governor of Massachusetts, Romney supported gay rights and abortion rights but as a presidential candidate has disavowed both, donning the contemporary conservative doctrines of his party rather than challenging them.
"I was a great fan of George -- he was a very fair, very honest, straightforward man," said Phil Maxwell, a frequent boyhood visitor to the Romney house and now a Democrat and lawyer in suburban Detroit. "As I've watched Mitt's career I see him sort of taking chameleon positions . . . playing to the right wing of the party, which George never would have done. George would have told it the way it was and suffered the consequences."
But there are more parallels than conflicts in the Romneys' lives and careers, and the son's resume seems like an echo of the father's.
