The oldest son of Mitt Romney, Tagg, opened up recently about his father’s run for the presidency, according to a story in The Boston Globe. Romney was not sold on running a second time for the presidency following his loss in 2008. At first, Romney informed his family that he would not run a second time. Tagg said that his father’s stance on not running a second time was 100 percent honest.
“He wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my life. He had no desire to . . . run,” said Tagg. Tagg and his mother eventually convinced Mitt to run. “If he could have found someone else to take his place . . . he would have been ecstatic to step aside. He is a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them, but he has deep faith in God and he loves his country, but he doesn’t love the attention.”
Romney had trouble considering his second run because he could not convince his most trusted adviser, Mike Murphy, to work with him. Murphy ran Romney’s campaign to become the governor of Massachusetts, but did not want to leave California, where he was working as a part-time political commentator and a screenwriter. Romney finally picked Stuart Stevens.
Stevens ran the presidential campaigns for George W. Bush and worked on the 2008 campaign for Romney. One problem with Stevens was that he had to share power with Romney’s other advisers, which did not work. In 2012, Romney told Stevens that he would be in power along with Russ Schriefer.
Stevens was bent on staying focused on the handling of the economy by Obama and what Romney would change to fix it. He though that a biography of Romney was less important. “When you come into a job interview, you don’t start showing family pictures,” Stevens said following the election.
The Romney family thought a film or group of ads focused on Romney’s life would help show the country how much he helped average people personally. The project was going to be run by documentarian Greg Whiteley, who filmed part of Romney’s 2008 campaign. The idea was dropped and the family blamed Stevens.
“There [were] different areas that you could go into,” Stevens said. “Talk about Mitt’s business record, Mitt‘s personal story, what Mitt would do as president . . . and why Barack Obama is bad. We tested all four equally. We were open to doing any combination, and the one that tested far and away the best, people wanted to know what Mitt Romney would do as president.”