George Romney

Many worlds collided Sunday night on the second episode of this season's long-anticipated “Mad Men”: Don Draper and the Rolling Stones. Fat, depressed Betty and Don's mod new wife, Megan. And a sideways swipe at George Romney, a onetime presidential candidate, that had many wondering if series creator Matthew Weiner was implying something about his son, Mitt, front-runner in the current Republican presidential campaign. In the episode, Betty's new husband, Henry Francis, a Republican political operative working for New York City Mayor John Lindsay, tells someone on the phone, “Well, tell Jim his honor's not going to Michigan.

In the 16 months that he has been running for president, the thrust of Mitt Romney's policy toward Afghanistan has been this: He would hew to President Obama's timeline to withdraw U.S. troops by the end of 2014, but he would part ways with the president by giving greater deference to the judgment of military commanders. Beyond that, Romney has revealed little about what his guiding principles would be for committing U.S. troops in conflicts around the world or what elements have shaped his thinking about Afghanistan -- subjects likely to be broached in Monday's foreign policy debate.

George Wilcken Romney, former governor of Michigan, contender for the Republican presidential nomination, U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development and chairman of American Motors Corp., died Wednesday. He was 88. Romney died of natural causes and was found slumped on a treadmill by his wife, Lenore, in their suburban Detroit home in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., according to their son G. Scott Romney.

DENVER - As President Obama and Mitt Romney prepare to face off Wednesday evening, their wives each played the role of political spouse perfectly, declining to offer the mildest critiques of their husbands' debating skills and speaking of their nerves as they watch their husbands in their first face-to-face contest. “I get so nervous at these debates and, you know, I'm like one of those parents watching their kid on the balance beam. You're just -- just standing there just trying not to, you know, have any expression at all,” First Lady Michelle Obama told CNN in an interview aired Tuesday.

George Romney was a portrait machine. Two hundred years before Andy Warhol dubbed his New York studio the Factory, Romney was manufacturing painted likenesses of grandees and their families in London's newly fashionable Cavendish Square. Between 1776 and 1795, his meticulous record books show, the artist was seeing three, five, even seven sitters per workday--plus one or two on Sunday.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - In 1963, an explosive year in the quest for civil rights, George Romney appeared unannounced in the mostly white suburb of Grosse Pointe and marched to the front of an anti-segregation demonstration to stand beside black leaders. Letters from startled constituents poured into the office of the first-term Michigan governor, whose son Mitt was then 16. Supporters who had helped the elder Romney win his narrow victory the previous November said his actions made him "a double-crosser" and a "Judas" to the people who voted for him. Their diatribes were sprinkled with warnings that they would work against him: "You are a 'dead duck' for 1964," one detractor typed above a newspaper photograph of a shirt-sleeved Romney walking shoulder to shoulder with civil rights activists.

Re "Romney's running mate," Dec. 25 Comparing Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney with his late father George Romney's "singular political failure" -- that he had "endured 'brainwashing' by U.S. military leaders and diplomats" -- seems more like singular honesty in the present context of our deceptive and damaging Iraq adventure. To say that George Romney "was inflexible in his beliefs" implies that, unlike his son's political fickleness, he had them. Richard S.

The task at the 33rd annual tulip festival in Holland, Mich., would have made any other teenager cringe. But his father was running for governor and there were votes to be won, so 15-year-old Mitt Romney suited up in Dutch trousers, a hat and wooden shoes. Before thousands of people, Romney and his parents led a parade of "gaily attired street cleaners," the 1962 campaign news release said, "some splashing out soapy water from hickory barrels and others manning brooms like the candidate" to show Michigan "a preview of the sparkling fresh look" that George Romney would bring to the state.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Michelle Obama delivered an affectionate tribute to her husband Tuesday night as a man of courage and unshakable conviction, putting a warm gloss on an opening convention program filled with harsh attacks on Republican Mitt Romney. “I didn't think it was possible, but today I love my husband more than I did four years ago. Even more than I did 23 years ago, when we first met,” the first lady said in a prime-time speech carried live by the major TV networks.

Back in his home state of Michigan for a final weekend of campaigning, Mitt Romney said he hoped to be the first president who was a "car guy" and showed his personal devotion to American cars by listing the ones in his own garage. "It just feels good being back in Michigan. You know the trees are the right height," he said before an audience of the Detroit Economic Club, reprising a line that was mocked by late-night comedians. "The streets are just right. I like the fact that most of the cars I see are Detroit-made automobiles.

If, as seems possible, Mitt Romney is not elected U.S. president on Nov. 6, he will not be the first presidential candidate to run on the issue of competence and then lose because he ran an incompetent campaign. He will not even be the first governor of Massachusetts to do so. In 1988, Michael Dukakis, who was ahead in the polls just after the Democratic convention, declared in his acceptance speech: "This election isn't about ideology. It's about competence. " Then he proceeded to blow his large lead and lose to George H.W. Bush, who turned out to be a tougher old bird than anyone suspected.

It was a clear sign the campaign has gone on too long when I had a dream about Mitt Romney a couple of nights ago. Other than the fact that the Romney summoned from my unconscious was sitting at a breakfast table with me and was willingly answering questions, the dream was pretty realistic. The candidate was dressed in his ubiquitous Brooks Brothers checked shirt and relaxed-fit jeans. He seemed relaxed, too. But when I asked him a softball question about the personal strains of campaigning, he answered with a generic policy statement.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- Mitt Romneyhas repeatedly refused to back down from controversial statements he made to donors that those who support President Obama don't pay federal income taxes, consider themselves "victims" and are dependent on the government for their needs. But the multimillionaire GOP presidential nominee spent part of Wednesday pushing back at the suggestion that those statements mean that he doesn't care for those who are not as fortunate as he is. He insisted that he cares for all Americans, including the poor, and empathizes with those who need government assistance.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Michelle Obama delivered an affectionate tribute to her husband Tuesday night as a man of courage and unshakable conviction, putting a warm gloss on an opening convention program filled with harsh attacks on Republican Mitt Romney. “I didn't think it was possible, but today I love my husband more than I did four years ago. Even more than I did 23 years ago, when we first met,” the first lady said in a prime-time speech carried live by the major TV networks.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Craig Janis, a 28-year-old technology entrepreneur, is a rare species. He's a Mormon Democrat in Utah, a state where only 7% of Mormons are Democrats. Janis' shift from Republican to a Democrat began in college, but four years ago, he wanted to like Mitt Romney The idea of a fellow Mormon, one who reminded him of church leaders of his youth, winning the White House tugged at Janis' heart.  Janis said he respected Romney's record as governor of Massachusetts, when he passed a universal healthcare bill.

BOSTON - As he gave his acceptance address at the Republican National Convention last week, Mitt Romney for the first time gave America an intimate look at the role that his Mormon faith has played in his life and how his work in the church as a pastor helped shape him. When Romney and his wife, Ann, attended church Sunday in Wolfeboro, N.H., his close friend J.W. Marriott (who is known as “Bill”) offered a bookend to that discussion - testifying during the service about how the spotlight on Romney this week had cast the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a positive light and had drawn welcome attention to good works of the church.

I was stationed at Ft. Bliss, Texas, in 1968 for a year at an Army language school learning Vietnamese. During the breaks in the endless memorization of the endless monosyllabic vocabulary, we would escape over the border to Juarez, Mexico, or out into the wasteland of west Texas to reclaim a bit of sanity. I met a family through a church group that invited me to their ranch on weekends. And I still bless them for their thoughtfulness. The grand dame of the family was a wonderful Texas horsewoman who always needed work done around the place.

Mitt Romney apologized Thursday after a newspaper story described bullying behavior on his part when he was an 18-year-old senior at an elite, all-boys prep school in Michigan. The Washington Post detailed a 1965 incident at Cranbrook School in which a buttoned-down Romney apparently was incensed by the dyed blond locks of a junior known for his "nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. " He led a "posse" of students in a charge against the boy, the Post reported. "He can't look like that," Romney reportedly told a close friend at the time.

TAMPA, Fla. -- Marco Rubio linked his family's immigrant story to that of Mitt Romney's in a speech introducing the Republican nominee Thursday, saying the shared experiences were testimony to what makes America an exceptional nation. Rubio, one of a long list of rising Republican stars granted key speaking roles at the Republican National Convention, balanced his address to a riveted audience to include elements of his own background that have endeared him to the party with a full-throated endorsement of Romney's capacity to lead the nation, while also zinging the Democratic incumbent.

TAMPA, Fla. - Mitt Romney officially gained a historic presidential nomination Tuesday night as Republicans tried to steer national attention toward their storm-shortened convention and a tight fall race against President Obama. The former Massachusetts governor became the first Mormon to be nominated for president by either major party, a distinction that eluded his father, George Romney, an unsuccessful Republican candidate in the 1960s. The milestone, ensured months ago by Romney's primary-season victories, ended a nomination journey of more than five years that included his defeat in the 2008 contest.