Working to break his own storybook spell

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Mitt Romney arrives at his campaign headquarters here 10 minutes early, a knife-blade crease in his khakis, winter tan, lots of hair, all of it in place. He skips the coffee and doughnuts in favor of skim milk and the home-baked granola sent along in a zip-lock baggie by his wife. That's Ann, his high school sweetheart -- the mother of his five handsome sons -- with whom he says he has never had a serious argument in 38 years of marriage.

By central-casting standards, the former Massachusetts governor is the perfect presidential specimen -- a comforting throwback to the 1950s, when nobody got divorced (they fell in love in high school and that was it), mothers stayed at home (he dubbed Ann the Romney CFO -- chief family officer) and the greatest parental challenge was making the boys practice their piano (Ann used to pinch their necks).

But as his campaign picks up speed in a wide-open GOP field, Romney comes face to handsome face with an unusual challenge: Can a candidate appear too perfect? It's a question that modern American voters, fed a steady diet of infidelity, divorce, pot smoking, high-class call girls and foil-wrapped cash stashed in freezers, have not had to ponder in a long time.

For rock-solid Republicans in early-voting Iowa and New Hampshire, the "Father Knows Best" image seems to resonate: Romney leads in polls in both states, even though he trails the twice-divorced, sometimes-dressed-in-drag former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani in national surveys.

But if his political record is any indication, Romney's storybook personal life could backfire as he tries to broaden his appeal to a general-election audience. That was the case in the 2002 governor's race, when his campaign aired the "Ann" ad -- in which she described him as "very romantic" and he described her as "just good to the core" -- and his poll numbers tanked overnight.

It cannot be overlooked that this was Massachusetts, which was economically depressed at the time, and the sight of a well-to-do Mitt frolicking in a lake with his well-behaved sons left voters feeling more alienated than inspired. (He came back to win, in part because his opponent turned out to be sort of a sourpuss, which voters liked even less.)

Still, Romney seems to have learned that a well-placed flaw or two can be an advantage, putting his campaign team in the unique position of pointing out his shortcomings while his rivals struggle to make voters forget theirs.