Does Mitt Romney even want to be president? That’s not a rhetorical question: In Mitt Romney’s heart of hearts, maybe all he really wanted was the Republican nomination.


Every time Romney gets an opportunity to reset the narrative of the election, he makes some psychologically revealing mistake. Giving Clint Eastwood his spotlight, rattling a rubber saber over a tweet from the U.S. embassy in Cairo while it was under attack, writing off half of all American voters as moochers – you only have to tilt your head to see each of these “gaffes” as a cry for help. And Republicans themselves are grumbling about Romney’s skimpy schedule of public events, where voters might take his measure and enthusiasm for a ground campaign could be generated.


“There’s not really a campaign here,” one Republican close to GOP fundraisers complained to Real Clear Politics. Lindsey Graham and Peggy Noonan have also bemoaned his semi-AWOL schedule.


I can think of three reasons Mitt might be psychologically satisfied with attaining the nomination alone: avenging his father, legitimizing his religion and, well, winning the Republican nomination is generally very good for business.


When Mitt was 20, he watched as his father, Michigan Gov. George Romney, blew his chance at the nomination in 1968 by saying he had been “brainwashed” into supporting the Vietnam war; that gave the far right all they needed to demolish Richard Nixon’s only progressive rival. For Mitt to win the nomination is a remarkable accomplishment. During the primaries, the Tea Party crowd couldn’t stand him of course; they repeatedly elevated “anybody but Romney” – Trump, Gingrich, Perry, Cain, Gingrich again, Santorum – above him in the polls. But wielding his money and his “electability” Mitt eventually beat back just the sort of “muttonheads,” as he called the rabid right in ’68, who had humiliated his dad.


So even if he’s sputtering out now, Mitt nevertheless has the best of both worlds: He has vindicated his father before the people who count, and he wouldn’t have to actually govern. He can avoid the years of “gaffes” and words “not elegantly stated” and “you people” prying into his finances that his presidency would surely entail. 


Anyway, Romney’s nomination has already done something very real for one of the few American institutions he truly seems to care about: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He has helped to establish Mormonism as a legitimate part of the Republican Party hierarchy, not to mention American political history. 


In the Jan. 8 debate in New Hampshire, he gave us a big hint of his reluctance to be president. When Santorum asked Romney why, if he’d been such a great governor, he didn’t run for re-election, Mitt answered:


“I went to Massachusetts to make a difference. I didn’t go there to begin a political career, running time and time again… Run again? That would be about me. I was trying to help get the state into the best shape as I possibly could, left the world of politics, went back into business.”


“Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney?” Newt famously replied. “The fact is, you ran in ‘94 [against Ted Kennedy] and lost… .The fact is, you had a very bad re-election rating, you dropped out of office, you had been out of state for something like 200 days preparing to run for president.”


That’s true: He’s always seemed more interested in running for office than in governing. And maybe now that he’s headed the conservative ticket and spent millions of his own money on Republican causes and auditioned before the billionaires who make up his finance committee, he’ll go on to join their ranks, too. 


Leslie Savan is the author of Slam Dunks And No-Brainers: Pop Language in Your Life, the Media, and, Like… Whatever.

Does Mitt Romney even want to be president? That’s not a rhetorical question: In Mitt Romney’s heart of hearts, maybe all he really wanted was the Republican nomination.


Every time Romney gets an opportunity to reset the narrative of the election, he makes some psychologically revealing mistake. Giving Clint Eastwood his spotlight, rattling a rubber saber over a tweet from the U.S. embassy in Cairo while it was under attack, writing off half of all American voters as moochers – you only have to tilt your head to see each of these “gaffes” as a cry for help. And Republicans themselves are grumbling about Romney’s skimpy schedule of public events, where voters might take his measure and enthusiasm for a ground campaign could be generated.


“There’s not really a campaign here,” one Republican close to GOP fundraisers complained to Real Clear Politics. Lindsey Graham and Peggy Noonan have also bemoaned his semi-AWOL schedule.


I can think of three reasons Mitt might be psychologically satisfied with attaining the nomination alone: avenging his father, legitimizing his religion and, well, winning the Republican nomination is generally very good for business.


When Mitt was 20, he watched as his father, Michigan Gov. George Romney, blew his chance at the nomination in 1968 by saying he had been “brainwashed” into supporting the Vietnam war; that gave the far right all they needed to demolish Richard Nixon’s only progressive rival. For Mitt to win the nomination is a remarkable accomplishment. During the primaries, the Tea Party crowd couldn’t stand him of course; they repeatedly elevated “anybody but Romney” – Trump, Gingrich, Perry, Cain, Gingrich again, Santorum – above him in the polls. But wielding his money and his “electability” Mitt eventually beat back just the sort of “muttonheads,” as he called the rabid right in ’68, who had humiliated his dad.


So even if he’s sputtering out now, Mitt nevertheless has the best of both worlds: He has vindicated his father before the people who count, and he wouldn’t have to actually govern. He can avoid the years of “gaffes” and words “not elegantly stated” and “you people” prying into his finances that his presidency would surely entail. 


Anyway, Romney’s nomination has already done something very real for one of the few American institutions he truly seems to care about: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He has helped to establish Mormonism as a legitimate part of the Republican Party hierarchy, not to mention American political history. 


In the Jan. 8 debate in New Hampshire, he gave us a big hint of his reluctance to be president. When Santorum asked Romney why, if he’d been such a great governor, he didn’t run for re-election, Mitt answered:


“I went to Massachusetts to make a difference. I didn’t go there to begin a political career, running time and time again… Run again? That would be about me. I was trying to help get the state into the best shape as I possibly could, left the world of politics, went back into business.”


“Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney?” Newt famously replied. “The fact is, you ran in ‘94 [against Ted Kennedy] and lost… .The fact is, you had a very bad re-election rating, you dropped out of office, you had been out of state for something like 200 days preparing to run for president.”


That’s true: He’s always seemed more interested in running for office than in governing. And maybe now that he’s headed the conservative ticket and spent millions of his own money on Republican causes and auditioned before the billionaires who make up his finance committee, he’ll go on to join their ranks, too. 


Leslie Savan is the author of Slam Dunks And No-Brainers: Pop Language in Your Life, the Media, and, Like… Whatever.