TNR : George Romney was the opposite of son Mitt : George experienced poverty and hard labor while growing up, lacked a college degree - Enemy of Barry Goldwater and extremists, despised riches and high salaries and served the community

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"As American Motors Company’s chief executive George repeatedly refused increases in his salary, bonuses, and stock compensation. He called on Americans to reject self-indulgence and excess, and would have taken a dim view of Mitt and the other principals of Bain Capital posing for a photo with dollar bills bursting out of their suits".

The New Republic

Why Mitt Romney’s Whole Career Is Making His Father Roll Over in His Grave

March 5, 2012

By Geoffrey Kabaservice
Geoffrey Kabaservice is the author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party.


Why Mitt Romney’s Whole Career Is Making His Father Roll Over in His Grave


Some excerpts :

While both father and son were deeply influenced by their Mormon upbringing, for example, George was more strongly marked by the religion’s turbulent origins. George was born in a Mormon colony in Mexico founded by his grandfathers, who had fled the United States rather than abandon the practice of polygamy. He was one of the 207 grandchildren of those prolific patriarchs. His parents, who were not polygamous, lost everything when Mexican rebels confiscated their property. They returned destitute to the U.S., and George experienced poverty and hard labor while growing up. Mitt, by contrast, was raised in affluence, and the family history of exile and struggle was only a distant ancestral memory.

And while both Romneys enjoyed successful business careers, George’s leadership of the American Motors Corporation (AMC) gave him a very different skill-set from Mitt’s at the private-equity firm Bain Capital. Mitt never attempted to take to the airwaves to try to change consumers’ thinking, as George did in his efforts to sell the public on the merits of compact cars such as the AMC Rambler, or to engage in the give-and-take of slugging it out with unions. George’s flesh-pressing efforts to win over auto workers on the factory floor gave him a comfort with personal interactions with ordinary voters that his son seems to lack.

Mitt’s Harvard pedigree also means that he gets more respect from the media than his father did; many reporters considered George stupid on account of his religiosity and lack of a college degree. But Mitt’s career has isolated him from contact with anyone who is not similarly rich, well-educated, or Mormon. This isolation, combined with his apparent lack of the emotional intelligence that George Romney had in spades, has hurt him politically.

Much of Mitt Romney’s approach at Bain was devoted to overthrowing the business philosophy of men like his father. George Romney made his name as an opponent of Big Business and Big Labor alike. He called for decentralizing economic power and extending capitalism’s benefits to a broad cross-section of society, through profit-sharing for workers and consumer-driven anti-monopoly regulation. Mitt, on the other hand, propagated the view that a company’s sole purpose was to increase shareholder value. His efficiency gospel, reinforced through the threat of leveraged buyouts, preached that the benefits of productivity increases should go not to workers but to upper management. His encouragement of the practice of giving top managers large equity stakes in their companies gave an enormous boost to executive pay packages, so that CEOs now earn more than 300 times the wages of the average worker.

George Romney spurned this kind of self-interested elitism. As AMC’s chief executive he repeatedly refused increases in his salary, bonuses, and stock compensation. He called on Americans to reject self-indulgence and excess, and would have taken a dim view of Mitt and the other principals of Bain Capital posing for a photo with dollar bills bursting out of their suits.

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