The Real Romney

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Overview

Two Boston Globe investigative reporters offer a riveting look at the Republican presidential candidate in this first full, unflinching biography, probing the personal life, faith, business career, and political leadership of Mitt Romney. Even after his first-person memoir, No Apology, many Americans still feel that they don’t know the man behind the legacy. Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, who have been covering Romney’s career for years and reporting on the major developments that have culminated in his run for president in 2012, now deliver The Real Romney, the first complete biography of the expectation-defying politician.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

No number of candid shots of candidates in street clothes can convince modern American voters that they are being shown the authentic version of a person running for the most powerful public office in the world. In an effort to provide a truer view of one contender, Kranish (coauthor, John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography) and Helman, both journalists at The Boston Globe, delve into the personal, political, and occupational past of Mitt Romney, including his Massachusetts governorship and his family's involvement in the formation and growth of the Mormon Church. Based on interviews and years of reporting, the authors bring to life the Bain Capital businessman turned politician, who is at times disarmingly human (as when moonwalking to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" during a meeting with fellow Mormon congregational leaders), yet reliably patrician and removed from the majority of Americans. Accounts of Romney's aloofness and uncertainty on issues seem incidental rather than detrimental, while moments of success (e.g., reigning in the budget of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City; restricting Massachusetts healthcare) hardly seem like persuasive grounds for election. In an attempt to forewarn him of his opponent's attacks, Romney's own media team once posited that he has "No story beyond cold business, Olympic turnaround, CEO governor." While the authors do an admirable job of rendering Romney's story in all its complexity, their book nevertheless functions better as biography than a game-changing political text. Photos. (Jan.)

Library Journal

Written by two Boston Globe investigative reporters who have followed Mitt Romney for years, this study plumbs Romney's success as a 2002 Olympics organizer, investment CEO, and Republican governor of typically Democratic Massachusetts while also considering his reputation for shift-with-the-winds calculation. Our first 2012 campaign book; out-of-the-gate fresh and boasting a 50,000-copy first printing.

More Reviews (3) Fewer Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

Boston Globe scribes Kranish (Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War, 2010, etc.) and Helman attempt to animate the famously wooden presidential candidate. The authors retrace the Romney lineage to the earliest days of the nascent Mormon Church, a time when the practice of polygamy forced his great-grandfather Miles Park Romney to flee to Mexico ahead of pursuing U.S. marshals. Such sharply drawn historical forays provide keen context to Mitt Romney's personal trajectory. As a result, two things about him become readily apparent: He is a man profoundly enmeshed in his family's religion, and, like his father George Romney, he really wants to be president of the United States. Beyond that, however, there is little here to explain what might be lurking behind the candidate's photogenic good looks. The fault almost certainly does not belong to Kranish and Helman, who provide plenty of evidence of careful research. The simple fact may be that the real Romney is as shallow and inscrutable as he is depicted here. Revelations are few and far between--the most damning being a report that a disapproving Romney once pressured an unmarried member of his church to give up her baby for adoption. The authors dutifully chronicle Romney's many career accomplishments as a venture capitalist, but most of these can be summarized in one sentence: He made a lot of money for people who already had a lot of money. In the end, the authors should be congratulated for making the TV-ready Romney more human; however, that alone does not make the "Mitt-bot" more fathomable or presidential. A good-faith effort to profile a notoriously hard-to-define candidate.

Benjamin Wallace-Wells

For any biographer, Romney presents…a high degree of difficulty. Not only is the former Massachusetts governor deeply cautious, but the two institutions that have been perhaps the most important to life and his career—the Mormon Church and the private-equity firm Bain Capital—are heavily fortified and stonily non-transparent. Michael Kranish and Scott Helman…have assembled in The Real Romney a genuinely compelling story and a more thorough record of Romney's life than has yet appeared. But their account nevertheless fails to penetrate Fort Romney's formidable defenses. Theirs is a portrait of Romney as a public figure, its narrative exposing not so much the man as the career.
—The Washington Post

Michiko Kakutani

The book retraces ground familiar to anyone who has been following coverage of the Republican nomination race, but it pulls together lots of details into a narrative that's absorbing and fair-minded…Perhaps the most useful portions of The Real Romney deconstruct his management style as a Bain executive and governor of Massachusetts, providing clues as to how he might govern as president.
—The New York Times

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780062123275
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 1/17/2012
Pages: 401
Sales rank: 43,392
Product dimensions: 6.34 (w) x 9.20 (h) x 1.33 (d)

Meet the Author

Michael Kranish, deputy chief of the Washington Bureau of The Boston Globe, has been a congressional reporter, a White House correspondent, and a national political reporter. Kranish coauthored, with other Globe reporters, John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography. He is also the author of Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War.

About This Book ix

Prologue 1

One Praying For a Miracle 11

Two Following the Call 31

Three Outside the Fray 52

Four A Brush with Tragedy 79

Five Family Man, Church Man 99

Six The Moneymaker 130

Seven Taking on an Icon 166

Eight The Torch is Lit 197

Nine The Ceo Governor 224

Ten Health Care Revolutionary 261

Eleven A Right Turn on the Presidential Trail 281

Twelve Back Into the Fire 320

Acknowledgments 333

Notes 331

Index 381

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