Like most of Romney’s momentous public events, the bill-signing extravaganza was a masterwork of political stagecraft, in a setting that evoked many important events in the nation’s history. Guests received programs printed on faux parchment with commemorative lapel pins to match. The stage of the majestic hall was augmented with a pedestal for the podium and an extended platform with a desk on a circular oriental carpet. On either side were banners to mark the occasion: “Making History in Healthcare.” The procession to the stage was led by a fife-and-drum corps clad in tricorn hats, breeches, and stockings, playing Colonial tunes. An audience of several hundred VIPs greeted Romney warmly with a thirty-second ovation.
As Romney spoke, the top of his head reached the frame of the majestic room’s focal point, George P. A. Healy’s enormous painting Webster Replying to Hayne, which depicts one of the most famous speeches ever delivered in the U.S. Senate during the debate over states’ rights. “This is a politician’s dream, you’ve got to admit,” Romney began. He thanked Cecil B. DeMille, the late Hollywood producer of film spectacles, for organizing the event. “This does classify as being over the top.” Privately, Romney had been uneasy about all the pomp, unsure how he would want to frame his association with the law politically down the road. Referring to the last time he and Kennedy had been at Faneuil Hall, for the pivotal 1994 debate, Romney quipped, “This for me feels a bit like the Titanic returning to visit the iceberg.” He said to hearty laughs, introducing Kennedy as “my colleague and friend,” “My son said that having Senator Kennedy and me together like this on the stage, behind the same piece of landmark legislation, will help slow global warming. That’s because Hell has frozen over.”
Kennedy was also greeted enthusiastically and after thanking Romney, he said, “My son said something, too, and that is when Kennedy and Romney support a piece of legislation, usually one of them hasn’t read it.” When the laughter subsided, he turned to Romney and said, “That’s not true today, is it governor?” Then he turned serious. “This is an achievement for all the people of our commonwealth and perhaps for the rest of America, too,” he proclaimed. “And we intend to make the most of it.” Romney moved to the desk and used each of fourteen commemorative pens during the signing. “It’s law,” he said upon finishing. “Congratulations.” The ceremony was over in forty minutes.
On that spring day, as he inked his name to the law, Romney knew he was going to launch a national campaign in the ensuing months. What he didn’t know was how his health care push would play for him politically. “I have to admit that I’m very, very proud of having been part of this process,” he said after the bill signing. “But I have no way of guessing whether it’s going to be a help or a hindrance down the road. Time will tell.”
More than five years later, it remains an open question. Passage of the law remains his greatest political achievement, but it has also become linked in infamy, in the eyes of his conservative critics, with the national health overhaul pushed through by President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress. Romney has said repeatedly that the Massachusetts law could serve as a model for other states, but he rejects comparisons with the national plan. “I think that there is a recognition that what we did with my leadership and that of others was to follow the constitutional principle of states’ rights—that we were a laboratory of democracy,” Romney said. “We carried out an experiment, and that’s a right and proper thing to do under the Constitution. . . . What the president did was to impose a one-size-fits-all plan on the nation.”
Michael Leavitt, who, as U.S. secretary of health and human services, gave final approval to the Massachusetts plan in July 2006, later said that about half the states had inquired about developing some aspect of what Massachusetts had done. “I don’t know if what Mitt Romney did is a conservative idea or a liberal idea,” Leavitt said. “But it is clearly an innovative idea.”
But has it worked? A detailed examination by The Boston Globe in 2011 of voluminous health care and financial data, and interviews conducted with key figures in every sector of the health care system, found that although there have been some stumbles—and some elements merit a grade of “incomplete”—the overhaul has worked as well as or better than expected, especially in accomplishing its principal goal of expanding coverage to almost every citizen. The percentage of residents without insurance is down dramatically, according to one survey, to less than 2 percent; for children, the figure is a tiny fraction of 1 percent. Those are the lowest rates in the nation. Recent U.S. Census data, however, put the percentage of uninsured slightly higher, indicating an uptick from 2009 to 2010.
Many more businesses are offering insurance to employees than were before the law; the fear going in was that the opposite would happen. The plan remains exceptionally popular among state residents; indeed, its popularity has only grown with time. There are some unhappy sectors—notably small-business owners, who had hoped to see moderating premiums and chafe, in some cases, at the state’s heavy-handed enforcement of the rules. And support for the requirement that individuals obtain insurance is down to a slender majority, a June 2011 poll showed.
Health care costs continue to grow at alarming rates, as they have nationally, but the consensus of industry leaders and health care economists is that the trend cannot be fairly traced to the makeover but rather to cost pressures baked into the existing health care payment system. Massachusetts does have among the highest health care costs in the nation, but it owned this dubious distinction long before Romney launched his push for universal coverage. The state’s share of costs, however, has been rising, and hospitals are bearing an increasing share of the load.
By any reasonable assessment, failure—the blunt summary offered by Romney’s foes—doesn’t describe his push for universal health care. But neither is the law an unalloyed success. It remains a work in progress, an ongoing experiment, especially when it comes to bringing costs down.
As Romney left the statehouse for the campaign trail, he was clearly wary of how the health care law would look. He made sure to describe it as “conservative” and “market-based” before Republican audiences and suggested that its success would be in doubt once the Democrats “get their hands [on] it.” He made light of Kennedy’s appearance at the bill signing, saying later, “I was a little concerned at the signing ceremony when Ted Kennedy showed up.” (Romney later contended that the remark had been merely a setup for a joke.) He later blamed his Democratic successor for fumbling the law’s implementation.
But he has never fully disavowed it, as some suggested he do. “A lot of pundits around the nation are saying that I should just stand up and say this whole thing was a mistake, that it was a boneheaded idea, and I should just admit it,” Romney said. “But there’s only one problem with that: It wouldn’t be honest. I, in fact, did what I believed was right for the people of my state.” He recounted an instance when a man had stopped him as he came out of a supermarket near his house and said, “Your health plan saved my life.” That, he said, “obviously warms my heart.”
Romney’s accomplishment on health care stood out in Massachusetts both for its merits and because it served as a reminder of what had made him such an attractive candidate for governor in the first place. He’d come in promising to shake up the system. And on the issue he had invested himself in more than any other, he had done just that. But that success raised a question, too: what else could he have achieved had he committed himself more to the job? “Significant successes,” such as health care reform “showed what Romney might have accomplished as governor had he focused his efforts more steadily on state policy leadership,” said Brian R. Gilmore, an executive vice president of Associated Industries of Massachusetts, which represents thousands of businesses. Others believe that Romney’s record will hold up better over time. “I’m not naive enough to think that people obviously [don’t] have some disappointment,” Bradley H. Jones, Jr., the Republican leader in the Massachusetts House and frequent Romney ally,
said at the end of Romney’s term. “My hope is that, like many things in life, when there’s a little bit of distance, people will take a broader view.”
Romney himself said he was pleased at how much he had gotten done, despite a legislature so dominated by Democrats. “The truth is, if you look at the record, it’s a heck of a lot more than I expected I’d get done in four years,” he said. “I’ll put it up against any other governor’s in America, not because I’m brilliant, but because the legislature and we did pretty well together.”
On the evening of January 3, 2007, Romney took the customary final walk out of the statehouse. And as usual, the stagecraft was off the charts. With cameras recording, he left the third-floor office and, with Ann at his side, descended the thirty-one steps of the statehouse. Along the way, he made a series of planned stops designed to highlight his record. He greeted the family of Melanie Powell, a thirteen-year-old killed by a repeat drunk driver and memorialized by Melanie’s Law, the tough drunken driving bill he had signed. He met students attending state colleges under the John and Abigail Adams Scholarships he had created. And he welcomed two families able to afford health insurance because of the new law. Then the Romneys left Boston’s Beacon Hill and returned home to Belmont for a quiet evening, a chapter of their life closed. The opening words of the next chapter had already been written. An hour before Romney departed the statehouse, the Federal Election Commission docketed a four-page form establishing a new political organization: the Romney for President Exploratory Committee.
[ Eleven ]
A Right Turn on the Presidential Trail
I know something about tailspins and it’s pretty clear Mitt Romney is in one.
—SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN ON HIS CAMPAIGN FOE
It was just hours after passage of his health care bill—the single greatest achievement of his political life—and Governor Mitt Romney’s thoughts had turned to Iowa. Settled into a top-floor suite at the Ritz-Carlton hotel, high above Boston Common, he was expecting a relaxed, chatty evening with a handful of Republican leaders from the first-caucus state. But the meeting quickly went awry. Romney had hoped that one of his guests, Doug Gross, would become chairman of his Iowa campaign. But Gross, an intense man who had grown up in a town called Defiance and was now a high-powered lawyer in Des Moines, wasn’t convinced. He grilled the Massachusetts governor, beginning with a subject he knew might upset Romney: how would Romney handle questions about his Mormon faith in a state where the GOP caucuses are dominated by Christian conservatives, many of whom don’t believe that Mormons are Christians?
“I’m not changing my religion,” Romney said, growing testy, according to another participant.
“I’m not asking you to,” Gross responded.
He moved on to his second question, and the atmosphere continued to cool. “We are sitting up here, up top of the Ritz-Carlton, you are fabulously successful, hopelessly wealthy compared to most people,” Gross continued, noting Romney’s starched shirt, fastidiously coiffed hair, and privileged upbringing. “Can you really relate to an average voter?” At that, Romney’s wife, Ann, stormed out of the room. Romney, in turn, became so angry and insulted that “he didn’t talk to me the rest of the night,” Gross said—even when the two men later sat side by side at a women’s collegiate basketball championship game. “It was the coldest shoulder I’ve ever experienced.”
Mitt Romney felt ready to run for president, ready to take the one career step that would fulfill his dream and succeed where his father, George, had fallen short. But he wasn’t ready for the most obvious questions that would come his way. He may not have felt he had to be, for solving problems and answering hard questions were skills he prided himself on, and with reason—his talents had shown through at Bain, at the Utah Olympics, and in the just-completed battle over health care. He had made millions of dollars and made his name. Still, there was a brittleness to his self-certainty, which came through loud and clear to Gross. And for potential allies like him, that was worrisome.
But it wasn’t a deal killer; Gross decided to sign on. Romney, he concluded, had a unique set of attributes that could enable him to win the election and be a superb president. Romney had excelled in many realms, including as a Republican governor in a Democratic state, and—this was key—had boundless financial means. For his part, Romney, despite his irritation at the questioning, knew he needed Gross’s connections. So Gross agreed to chair Romney’s Iowa campaign, showering the governor with public praise. It was the start of a relationship that began in a bad place and was destined to grow worse. The things that troubled Gross at the outset—Romney’s defensiveness when challenged, his resistance to advice from outside his immediate circle, his failure to face just how little he knew about running for president—would ultimately drive his campaign down a very bumpy road. It would leave behind bruises, frayed alliances, and a lingering question: what would he learn?
The PowerPoint slides rolled across the screen, each equally brutal in its description of the candidate:
Perception—phony.
Slick—not human (hair?)
You do not know where WMR [Willard Mitt Romney] comes from . . .
No story beyond cold business, Olympic turnaround, CEO governor.
This was not an attack by one of Romney’s opponents. It was a production of his own media team, war-gaming the likely lines of attack against him. It was a few months after the Ritz-Carlton meeting, and Romney’s advisers had gathered to try to address a series of questions: Who is Mitt Romney? What is the perception of him among voters? How could the campaign shape or reshape that image? As the slides rolled on, a recommendation appeared on one. What was needed, it said, was the creation of a “Primal Code for Brand Romney”—a core message that could be embedded in the minds of voters.
The media adviser behind the presentation, Alex Castellanos, knew all about political war games. He was a Cuban native whose parents had had $11 in their pockets when they’d fled Fidel Castro and brought him to the United States. Castellanos had become a favorite of Republican presidential candidates for his deeply conservative principles, his unsparing assessments of the political landscape, and his tough tactics. Romney had hired Castellanos and directed him to pull no punches, so Castellanos compiled a scathing catalog of his new client’s perceived liabilities. The PowerPoint presentation went on to contrast Romney with two leading likely rivals, Senator John McCain and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. McCain was a former prisoner of war and a hero, and Giuliani was known as “America’s mayor” because of the way he had responded to the 9/11 attacks. Both had credible credentials for taking on the presidency during the war on terrorism. Romney had nothing similar.
One of the campaign’s chief concerns was that Romney would be tagged, as one slide put it, as “Flip-flop Mitt,” given his changes on issues such as abortion. The media team urged Romney to counter that with a forward-looking brand. One of the slides suggested that Romney use this as his catchphrase: “Yes, we can.” But Barack Obama would take it before Romney could. Whatever the phrase, Romney had to be sold as an “optimistic, conservative leader who is calling upon the strength of the American people [to] lead us into the future, to a better place.”
The Romney campaign team also zeroed in on what they called the problem of the three M’s: Mormon, millionaire, Massachusetts. “There is a perception out there that there is this rich guy from a liberal state who’s got a funny religion,” as Romney’s campaign manager, Beth Myers, later put it in a Harvard University Institute of Politics seminar. A poll by the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg found that 37 percent of those surveyed would not vote for a Mormon for president, and the percentage was even higher among those likely to show up in Republican caucuses and primaries. A Gallup Poll taken around the same time found that 66 percent of those surveyed did not believe the country was ready for a Mormon president.
Yet winning in key early states such as Iowa and South Carolina would require support from religious conse
rvatives, who were deemed least likely to back a Mormon. It was a topic that Romney would variously try to tackle head-on or try to dismiss as irrelevant. In the end, however, the campaign could not ignore the polls. Many people simply didn’t understand Mormonism. The campaign’s conclusion was that Romney needed a proxy, preferably an evangelical leader with national credentials, who could vouch for him.
So it seemed almost providential that, just as Romney was trying to decide how to deal with the issue, one of his aides received an unsolicited phone call from one of the most influential evangelicals in America—not a pastor but a savvy Atlanta public relations agent. Mark DeMoss had built a successful business that promoted conservative Christian organizations, giving him connections to nearly every important evangelical leader in the nation. DeMoss had never met Romney, but he believed that the governor was being unfairly tarred. Though DeMoss knew that some Christian leaders didn’t consider Mormons to be Christians, he felt it made no sense to disqualify a Mormon from the presidency. Moreover, DeMoss was sold on Romney, impressed by his experience in government and business. The governor cleared his schedule to meet with DeMoss.
“You can’t pay me anything, ever,” DeMoss told Romney when the two met on September 11, 2006. If anyone thought DeMoss was profiting from the relationship, it would backfire. DeMoss urged Romney to meet evangelical leaders and face questions about Mormonism head-on. Romney agreed. And six weeks later, a who’s who of evangelical leaders arrived at the governor’s Belmont home, including the Reverend Jerry Falwell and the Reverend Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham. A plate of sandwiches was laid out in the kitchen, and then the guests joined Romney and his wife in the den. They took their seats in a circle of chairs as Romney said: Ask me anything you want.
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