The Dog on the Roof of the Car

Romney’s family is the motivating factor in all he thinks and does. One old story Barack Obama’s challenger can’t seem to shake, however, mars that perfect picture.

There are actually two stories concerning car roofs that help explain Mitt Romney’s character. The first concerns a Romney family vacation trip in the summer of 1983. It began in Boston on the Atlantic coast and went westward to the Canadian edge of Lake Huron. From 1971 to 1975, Mitt Romney studied law and economics at Harvard, where he graduated near the top of his class. After graduation, he was recruited by the Boston Consulting Group, one of the nation’s leading economic consulting firms, where he quickly began his rise to the upper levels, but these were not yet his best paid years. Those didn’t come until 1984–1998, when he headed Bain Capital Ventures.

The family car was a white Chevrolet station wagon, and it was packed full to the roof with everything needed for the family’s vacation. Mitt and Ann sat in front, their five sons in the rear seats. The only place left for the family dog, the Irish setter Seamus, was up on the luggage rack on the roof where they secured him in his transport cage. They even provided him with an improvised windshield. Nevertheless, the journey didn’t sit well with Seamus and it wasn’t long before he began howling. That was followed by a brown liquid flowing down the rear window. Father Romney pulled in at a filling station where he hosed Seamus and his cage down with water, loaded everything back up and continued their journey.

The incident with Seamus happened nearly three decades ago, but that doesn’t stop Romney’s political opponents from using the anecdote as an example of Romney’s lack of feelings and cold-blooded crisis management style. The Seamus incident popped up repeatedly during the Republican primary election campaign, and there’s an excellent chance that the incident of the dog on the car roof will also re-emerge when Romney runs against Barack Obama in the general election.

The other, less well-known story originated back in the days when Mitt had already earned several million dollars at Bain Capital and could afford to buy a BMW convertible as a third car. The new toy quickly caught wife Ann’s eye, and it wasn’t long before she was driving it more than he was. One hot and humid summer day, she forgot to put the top up when she left the car in the driveway. A sudden severe thunderstorm nearly totaled the new car. Mitt didn’t waste any angry words over his wife’s misconduct.

Their oldest son, Taggart, now 42, reports that his dad never contradicts his mom in public and that in squabbles in private, she nearly always gets the last word. He and his four brothers feel that their father’s deep love and respect for their mother is the basis of their family. Mitt himself says, “Her love for me, of course, is the greatest source of joy I could possibly have.” He also calls her his best adviser and one who recognizes instinctively whether a person is genuine and authentic or false and hypocritical.

Betrothed since high school

His family, second only to the Mormon faith in motivating Mitt Romney, may be too traditional for some. On Wednesday, Democratic strategist Hillary Rosen commented that Ann Romney, “actually never worked a day in her life.” What Rosen meant but didn’t say was that Ann Romney had never held a paid job outside the home, choosing instead to begin raising five sons immediately after she finished her college studies.

The political image being pushed by Democrats of an ice-cold corporation-restructuring financier who enjoyed firing thousands while earning millions went with the caricature of Ann Romney as the housewife who had no real clue as to how middle-class wives actually lived. Ann Romney reacted, tweeting, “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.” She added, “Other women make other choices to have a career and raise family, which I think Hilary Rosen has actually done herself. I respect that, that’s wonderful. But you know, there are other people that have a choice, we have to respect women in all those choices that they make.”

Ann and Mitt Romney have known each other since grade school and pledged their troth in high school. They kept that pledge even when Mitt served a two-year obligatory Mormon missionary mission in France. Besides their five sons and their wives, they now have 16 grandchildren. Ann was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998 — an event Mitt described as the worst day of his life. She was able to largely overcome the disease through a nine-month intravenous steroid therapy, coupled with holistic treatment. In addition to all that, she also survived breast cancer in 2008.

Willard Mitt Romney was born March 12, 1947, in Detroit, where his father was first successful in the automobile industry and later became governor of the state of Michigan, serving from 1963 to 1969. George Romney ran for the Republican nomination for president in 1968 but was defeated by Richard Nixon early on. Nixon later took Romney into his cabinet as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

For Mitt Romney, the youngest of four children, his father was his constant guide and role model. He credits surpassing his father’s economic as well as his political success to the reverence he has always had for him.

He lost his first political outing in 1994, when he ran for the U.S. Senate against Ted Kennedy. His career in public service really began in 2001 when he took over as manager of the winter Olympic games in Salt Lake City. The games had suffered from a bribery scandal and a debt crisis. Romney successfully reduced costs and was mainly successful in restoring confidence in the Olympic organizing committee.

The motto is, “Mitt is mean”

The label “Olympic savior” was instrumental in his successful run for governor of Massachusetts in 2002 — nearly a miraculous feat for a Republican. He governed as a moderate from 2003 to 2007, enacting a healthcare reform program now widely seen as the template for Barack Obama’s national health care plan. While that complicated and delayed his nomination during the primaries, the fact that he is considered a pragmatic problem solver instead of a stubborn ideologue will help him with moderates voting in the general election.

Democrats will try to raise a million dollars to campaign, especially in swing states, using media spots reminding people of his inhumane treatment of Seamus. The motto already being used: “Mitt is Mean.” Seamus spent his declining days with Romney’s older sister, Jane, in California, where he is reported to have died peacefully in his sleep slightly over a year ago.