Not in his father's footsteps

At the National Governors Conference in 1964, his Republican colleagues, stunned by Barry Goldwater's ascendancy, practically begged Romney to accept the presidential nomination by acclamation. In 1966, he won reelection overwhelmingly, and he would now be the savior not merely of Detroit or the Republican Party but of the nation, opinion leaders decided. By 1967, the Harris polling organization reported that he had a better chance of winning the White House than any Republican since Dwight D. Eisenhower.

His son, Mitt, was then 19. At the age when most kids are awe-struck by their dad's ability to change a tire, Mitt was seeing his dad on the cover of Time and in TV commercials. By the time he approached maturity, his father was seen as something near to a national messiah.

The reason for the George Romney cult was simple. The world called him a "maverick." In a Republican Party trending right, he called America's cult of rugged individualism "nothing but a cover for greed." His forthright honesty was his calling card. His contrast with the wheeler-dealer Lyndon Johnson and the used-car salesman Richard Nixon made him -- along with that strong, square chin and silvering hair -- look like his party's only hope.

Then it all started to unravel.

An exploratory campaign office sprung up a few blocks from the state Capitol. A reporter noticed a line of books on Vietnam on the unpainted bookshelves. Romney kicked off his six-state tour warning that he wouldn't say anything about Vietnam until he had a chance to study the situation more, perhaps after a second visit (his first had been in 1965, on a junket with other governors). But the longer he said nothing, the more the reporters pressured him to say something.

Honesty was a dull blade to take into a knife fight with Nixon, who was also running for president. Romney was being chased by about 40 reporters early in 1967, each vying to see if he had what it took to play at this level of the game. In Anchorage, he uttered the apparently inoffensive observation that Republicans had a better chance of taking a fresh look at Vietnam because LBJ was "locked in." In Salt Lake City, he said the problem was LBJ's flip-flopping between escalation and negotiation offers. A salivating scribe pointed out the contradiction: Was LBJ "locked in" or a flip-flopper? In Idaho, Romney fended off Vietnam questions for 40 minutes. Then he mentioned Johnson's "political expedience ... getting his country in trouble at home and abroad, including Vietnam." He had violated his moratorium not to talk about Vietnam, the vultures said, demanding a follow-up: Would he give an example of LBJ's expedience?