Mitt Romney says he won’t do it again. After two failed presidential runs, Romney seems to be giving his final answer to the oft-asked question of whether he’ll try once more.
“No, no, no,” he told the New York Times.
“I’m not running for president in 2016,” he told CNN.
“We’re so ready to watch the next person step up and take that nomination,” his wife told Fox News.
But still, some are considering Romney to be the 2016 Republican front-runner. His advisors hear the request every day from former donors, the grass roots, and supporters. And the Netflix original documentary, “Mitt,” has political insiders and Romney followers all abuzz about what the future might hold.
We took the question to Mormons in Boston who followed Romney’s previous presidential attempts closely. All Bostonians interviewed currently live in the Cambridge Massachusetts Stake, where Romney once served as stake president.
Mitt Romney campaigning in Paradise Valley, Ariz. in 2011. Photo courtesy Gage Skidmore.
Kyle Welch, Boston
Mitt won’t run again. If he were to run, he’d need to have a different campaign team. He put his team together like an executive, and he needed to put it together like a politician — with the fear of being blindsided (which he was over and over again). How on earth did he have a team that didn’t see the amazingly poor chance of him winning on election day? You need the campaign to drink the Kool-Aid till the end, but Mitt needed to stay away from the punch bowl. How did he not get prepped on how to talk about his money in Republican debates? How did he not know how to frame Benghazi? He had an executive team of “yes men” who worked hard and did not question him or the program. He needed a paranoid political team of dorks and super nerds.
The narrative on “who is Mitt Romney?” was completely out of his control. I am a Mormon alumnus of HBS and BYU studying private equity, and I didn’t connect with Mitt Romney! Yet I watch the documentary Mitt and I love the guy. This is a new political age where politicians can’t shape their narrative by limiting access (i.e. closed-door events excluding the 47%). Mitt needs a full-time live stream (possibly with a 10 minute delay) of every moment in his life if he is going to convince anyone he is as great as I know he is. He needs to disclose tax records and school records and become an open book. The only way to overcome others shaping the narrative is to flood the media with disclosure. Show how Mitt is hearing bad news, good news, or picking up trash in the hotel. Get the public to realize who he is by seeing how he interacts. A Mitt cam that gave everyone full access to nearly every moment of Mitt would have changed the game. I don’t want to see a speech — I want authenticity. I want to feel like I know the guy. Mitt’s problem is that he did not realize that the only way to control the narrative is start with extremely open access.