Did the new “Mitt” documentary about Mitt Romney come a year too late? The documentary has gotten generally rave reviews and positive reviews from many (including TMV’s Ron Beasley whose review is here) who felt it showed a Romney they never knew. The Spectator blog’s Bill Zeiser definitely thinks it would have been not just good politically it if had run sooner but would have presented a more accurate portrait of Romney to the American public:
“All I know about politics is what I get from The Daily Show and Colbert,” a hotel desk clerk tells the camera in the new documentary Mitt. And that seems to have been the problem for Mitt Romney’s failed 2012 presidential bid. It was not uncommon during the campaign to hear Romney called opportunistic, unprincipled, even sociopathic. He was an out of touch, rich guy candidate impugned by conservatives and liberals alike for—as Romney himself puts it in the film—his willingness to “say or do anything to get elected.” The Romney we meet in the documentary (available to stream on Netflix), however, is earnest, likeable, vulnerable, and all too human.
Indeed, this confirms what I had heard repeatedly from 2010 – 2012 from some unusual sources: video techs who did remotes for cable shows.
I did roughly 12 appearances on CNN as a talking moderate head from 2010 – 2012. Some were done when I was on the road in my other incarnation, in a total of four states. I always asked the techs the same question: did you have any famous people come in and what did you think?
At least four times I got the same answer. Their favorite was Mitt Romney. When I asked why again I got the same answer: 1)he was a really nice guy 2)he drove his own car or a rented car to the studio and treated everyone with friendship and respect. More on the documentary:
Here we see Romney not as we knew him from speeches and news clips, but as a man who laughed along with his family while listening to an episode of “This American Life,” who chased after garbage blowing in the wind on a hotel balcony, who prayed and cried along with those who he loves. It was deeply moving to observe just how present Romney’s late father George was on the campaign. The former governor of Michigan who had himself tested the presidential waters at one time lived on in spirit as an old banner hung on the campaign bus, and as a reminder of his presence that the younger Romney scrawled on his notes for the first debate against President Obama. Dad must have done the trick; Romney is widely considered to have upset the president in that debate.
And I have to admit a bias. No, I was not impressed with Mitt the candidate. I’m one of the vanishing few that liked Mitt the moderate Governor of Massachusetts and was eager to see that Romnney run in 2012 and nudge the GOP towards the center. But rather than see the man I had heard about from the techs and the more moderate politician who seemed to want to reach out, I saw someone seemingly falling all over himself trying to appeal to the Republican Party’s conservative base to show he was one of them even if it mean seemingly acting — or virtually stating — that he wasn’t one of the other larger percentage of Americans.
I see Mitt Romney as something of a political tragedy.
Our political system, political culture, and the Republican primary system work in certain ways. He felt to win he had to keep altering who he was to fit in,
Who was he? By all accounts, “Mitt” shows the “real” Romney as a person. Romney as a politician still remains somewhat elusive.
But the “real” person Romney was, was one the public never got to see.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.