Mitt Romney Mba

THE CONSULTANT Mitt Romney, photographed at Fenway Park in Boston on May 21.

Image: John Goodman

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It’s lunchtime in Sioux City, Iowa. In the Clarion Hotel ballroom, Mitt Romney is preaching his business experience to a couple hundred Republicans who have come to meet the former Massachusetts governor. “I spent my life in the private sector,” he tells the audience as they tuck into ham and turkey sandwiches. “In business, you make a better product or you go out of business. In government, things seem to stay the same.”

Later, as we drive through the Iowa cornfields, Romney continues the sermon, likening being president to being a C.E.O. “If you think about the government of the United States, it is an enterprise. It has leaders, employees,” he declares.

Willard Mitt Romney knows that the urge to have someone run the country like a business is a strong one in American politics. Periodically, this yearning attaches itself to a nutty object of desire. Lee Iacocca was one such love interest, talked up for the White House in the ’80s. That he’s once again made the bestseller list, almost three decades after the historic accomplishment of ­accepting a federal bailout for Chrysler, tells us that we’ll adhere this yearning to any C.E.O. with West Wing swagger. In the ’90s, Ross Perot got a fifth of the vote even though he was, um, odd. ­Today, ­Michael Bloomberg has the virtue of sanity, but his appeal is the same: He’s the executive who, as one C.E.O. who wants a C.E.O. president tells me, “gets things done … without all the bullshit.”

Romney doesn’t curse, but he’s pitching the same idea, and it has made the one-term governor a first-tier candidate. At 60, he’s got one of the best fundraising networks of any Republican candidate, tapping pals like his former Bain & Co. colleague Meg Whitman. “We need a fabulous leader for this country,” the eBay C.E.O. and Romney finance co-chair tells me. “That’s him.”

Not surprisingly, Romney, the first Mormon with a shot at being the ­Republican nominee, also has the backing of executives who share his faith, ­including Bill Marriott, the hotel magnate and a longtime friend. It was the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002, though, that made Romney a hero to many Mormons. The global spectacle was a signal moment for a flock once branded as outlaws. When Romney took over the Salt Lake Organizing Committee in 1999, the games were a scandal-plagued fiscal wreck. He made them profitable. Romney’s campaign coffers show him to be the pride of his people, a very white Jackie Robinson.

Romney, as is well known, comes by this business acumen naturally. ­Before becoming Republican governor of Michigan in 1963, his father, George, ran American Motors, giving us small and iconic cars such as the Rambler and coining such phrases as gas-guzzler. The son’s rise as a consultant at Bain & Co. and then his founding of Bain Capital, the private equity giant, are well documented too. What’s less understood is what this background might mean in the Oval Office. How would America be led by its first consultant in chief?

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