[Vision2020] Two: Father & Son

[Art Deco]

September 25, 2012
Two Romneys
Posted by Jill Lepore<http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/jill_lepore/search?contributorName=Jill%20Lepore>

George Romney was fifty-nine when he ran for reëlection as Michigan’s
governor, in 1966. In this half-hour television special (see a clip above
or the full-length version below), he explains his policies and plans for
the state. (I came across the film in the records of Campaigns, Inc., in
the California State Archives, while researching a piece on the history of
political consulting<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/24/120924fa_fact_lepore>.)


George Romney’s oldest son is now sixty-five. On television, he and his
father look and speak uncannily alike. What they say, though, is strikingly
different. Romney Republicanism in 2012 could hardly be more different from
Romney Republicanism in 1966. The difference, of course, isn’t so much a
family story as it is a story about the G.O.P.

Like Mitt, George started out as a businessman. Beginning in 1939, he was
the head of the Automobile Manufacturers Association. In 1954, he became
president of American Motors. He was committed to public education; in the
nineteen-fifties, he ran a Detroit public-school-improvement citizens’
committee. He ran for governor as a moderate Republican in 1962. Two years
later, he refused to support the Presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater,
calling Goldwater conservatism “extremist.”

The Governor Romney campaign film was meant to be broadcast on November 7,
1966, the day before the election. In it, Romney introduces his “action
team,” a slate of candidates running for statewide office. He also
introduces his wife, Lenore, as he holds her hand. (One thing that hasn’t
changed in four decades is the political wife.)

Talking about his record as governor, Romney, who smiles easily, boasts
about his achievements during his first term.

“Our educational programs are much better,” Romney says. “The investment in
jobs for our young people in the future is four times what it was four
years ago. And the unfortunate and the sick and the elderly have more
meaningful programs.”

More meaningful programs of that sort are notably lacking from the agenda
of Romney the younger. At a town hall in Youngstown, Ohio, last March, Mitt
Romney told a high-school senior that he shouldn’t expect the government to
help him pay for college. “And don’t expect the government to forgive the
debt that you take on,” he added. Part of the difference between father and
son comes to this: George Romney, was “on relief—welfare relief—in the
early years of his life,” Lenore Romney said, in a 1962 interview. But a
bigger part of the difference has to do with the rightward drift of the
G.O.P.

In the 1966 campaign film, George Romney talks about employment conditions:
“Conditions are better for workers, whether they’ve been working in plants
or whether they’re working on the farms or in shops or in offices,
including our public employees.” He charts the course of environmental
regulation. “Four years ago, we didn’t have any meaningful air or
water-pollution programs, and we’ve done a good deal, at least, to get
these programs started, or underway.”

He introduces the candidates for the boards of the University of Michigan,
Michigan State University, and Wayne State University.

“We have to improve the scientific and research atmosphere, because it’s
important that we educate the scientists who can create new jobs for
Michigan,” says Trudy Huebner, a candidate for the University of Michigan
Board of Regents.

“Very important,” Romney agrees.

Scientific research is no longer much of a plank for the G.O.P.

He mentions fiscal responsibility, of course, and the importance of
volunteerism (one of his most passionate commitments) but he spends more
time talking about investment in education, urban housing and
transportation, pollution, parks, and the arts—the kinds of things the
Republican Party just doesn’t talk about these days.

“None of us are going to live in the past,” George Romney said, in 1966.
No, indeed.

*Videos courtesy the California State Archives.*
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Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
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