Mitt Romney is not the first to undertake the race for the White House. His father George attempted to defeat Richard Nixon in the Republican primary in 1968 and left before his first date with the polls, defeated by his own mistakes and misgivings that aroused among more conservative voters. George was re-elected three times as governor of Michigan (1963-1969) and quote you is a double-edged sword for Mitt. Not only because of the failure of his candidacy but because both have very divergent profiles. George was a principled politician and Mitt has been molded by his own electoral challenge: in Massachusetts was a moderate governor demanded it because the state's progressive profile and now makes every effort to present himself as a conservative leader. Some observers see these shifts in a conditioned reflex of the candidate by the defeat of his father. A George not toppled Nixon's pragmatism but a verbal incontinence whose zenith came with his famous words about Vietnam in August 1967. At first the governor had defended the intervention persuaded by a visit to Southeast Asia. But just before launching his campaign changed his mind and announced in a television interview: "After returning from Vietnam, I realized that he had suffered the greatest brainwashing that anybody can suffer." George Romney's words shook the campaign as an earthquake. Someone capable of undergoing brainwashing could not run for president in the dark years of the Cold War. The candidate tried to make amends by undertaking a second trip to Vietnam. In vain and 44 years ago George Romney announced that threw in the towel. The loss left an indelible mark on the young Mitt, who followed the campaign of George from the French village where he served as a Mormon missionary. Before he had helped his father in his campaigns in 1964 and had accompanied him to the convention where George left the plenary to protest the candidate Barry Goldwater's opposition to racial desegregation. That and other details led rivals to portray him as a politician surly and coining a slogan against his inflexibility: "God is alive and is thought to be George Romney". It is impossible to draw a profile of the candidate's father without highlighting its status as a Mormon, which forced him to be born in a Mexican community of exiles and exercise as a missionary in the most miserable of Glasgow. George never graduated from college. But he managed to thrive even chairing a car company and to convince his girlfriend Lenore he left a promising career as an actress in Hollywood. His children recall that George and Lenore never stopped arguing. But George also brought her a rose every day to his wife. She tried to win a seat in the Senate in November 1970 and his candidacy succumbed driven by a handful of sexist attacks. George Romney died of a heart attack in 1995 and is buried with his wife in a cemetery in Michigan. Among his writings is a letter to Barry Goldwater conservative that includes this paragraph: "The parties with strong ideological dogmatism have to split the social fabric of a nation, lead to governmental crises and strong abort the agreements necessary to preserve freedom" . These words remind your child the challenge and take on a special resonance in this campaign marked by polarization.
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