• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The Bundler also noticed a new toughness in Romney. Not uncommonly, big donors want something for their checks—not in the way of a quid pro quo, but at least the chance to tell the candidate what he is doing wrong and how to run his campaign. The Bundler, who often set up these big donor meetings, recalled, “We’d be going to recruit an important fundraiser and the person would be pushing in on stuff, and they’d have a real discussion, but if the guy or woman was being ridiculous, unfair, the old Mitt would have been, Gee, you’re making great points here, I’ve really got to take that to heart. The new Mitt is, Well, we’ve made those changes and I’ve explained to you what they are. Now, if you’re not comfortable with that, maybe I’m not the guy for you to support.” The Bundler was with Romney, seeking donations, when some Wall Street moneymen, seeking a return on investment, were pushing him to support a particular investment tax break. Romney said no; it was a mistake to try to engineer prosperity through new tax breaks when what was needed was more certainty in the business climate.

In 2008, said the Bundler, Romney had “only his inner circle of advisers and he had too many of them. He drew no boundaries and he had no toughness, which is why he pandered to everybody because he didn’t say no to anybody. This time around, he’s a much better candidate because he’s got the boundaries and the toughness but still the openness. Very hard thing to pull off.”

* * *

As other candidates flailed about in the spring and summer of 2011, Romney ran a low-key, almost stealthy campaign. He quietly but methodically visited small towns in northern and western New Hampshire where John McCain had staged a comeback in 2008 by working the barbershops and VFW halls. Romney “looks like the guy who fired you,” said Mike Huckabee in 2008, so now Romney was trying to be more approachable. He took off his tie and wore blue jeans with his starched shirts. Romney rarely said anything of note, offering bland utterances and ducking controversial subjects when reporters tried to corner him.

Romney could laugh at the absurdity of campaigning. “He finds it, on some level, funny,” said an adviser. “He sort of grasps the deep and sometimes dark humor of it.” Romney’s sense of humor sometimes shows in an odd, teenage boy sort of way. He likes practical jokes. On a trip to Florida, while he was governor, a state trooper in his protective detail, acting like a prankster in a college dorm, short-sheeted the governor’s hotel bed. “Mitt decided to get back at him,” recalled an aide. He swiped some hotel stationery and wrote a letter from the hotel manager to the governor, apologizing for the badly made bed and saying that a chambermaid had been fired. Mitt showed the letter to the trooper, “who turned white,” according to the aide. In June, at a visit to Mary Ann’s Diner in Derry, New Hampshire, Romney lined up the waitresses for a photo with his arms around them. “Get closer,” he said, smiling, then suddenly jumped forward as if he had been goosed. “Just teasing,” he explained to reporters. He noted that, at a similar stop in his 2008 campaign, someone really had grabbed him in the rear end. He gave a hearty “Ha-ha-hah!” laugh.

Romney paced himself. A dutiful jogger, Romney runs three miles every morning, on jogging trails, on a treadmill in the gym, even around and around the hotel (often a Marriott), if there’s no place else to go. If he has a slice of pizza, he pulls the cheese off the top. Usually, Romney dines on turkey breast, rice, and broccoli, chased by water or maybe a Diet Coke. In South Carolina, for a big treat, he might visit a Bojangles’ for the fried chicken. Romney relished KFC, but pulled off the skin.

Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, is a non-schmoozing, no-joking-around type who arrives in the office before seven every morning. (“He probably dreams Mitt Romney,” said one colleague. “His mood spans the range from A to B,” said another.) Remembering the waste of 2008, the campaign manager hired far fewer bodies this time