Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America (41 page)

Once Romney began his search for a running mate, the rule became a major issue. Before Romney’s call to Christie, Myers had raised the issue with Bill Palatucci, Christie’s former law partner and one of his closest advisers. Christie had designated Palatucci to handle all vice presidential discussions with the Romney campaign. Are you familiar with the SEC’s “pay to play” rule? she asked. Palatucci said he was. She had been made aware of it earlier in the spring. It would have been a problem with any governor under consideration—among those speculated about were Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal and Virginia’s Bob McDonnell—but it was a particular problem for the governor of New Jersey because of the governor’s constitutional powers. Palatucci said Christie had learned to live with it as governor. There was nothing much to do about it. It was just there. He believed Myers was clearly concerned. He remembered her saying, “Are you telling me I have to tell Mitt Romney that he can’t select the person he wants as vice president?” Romney’s team began to weigh a series of technical questions about the rule and how it might apply. Could they form
separate committees—Romney for President and Christie for Vice President—to circumvent the fund-raising prohibitions? Would the rule apply only to contributions after the selection of a vice president, or would it apply retroactively, meaning the campaign might have to give money back to many donors on Wall Street?

Romney’s call to Christie was focused on all these issues, according to several people familiar with the contents of the conversation. Romney indicated that his team was still looking for a more precise answer to some of the questions. Romney had come to the conclusion that if the rule applied only to future fund-raising from Wall Street investment banks, he could live with that. He had already tapped that community for a significant amount of money. But if the rule was applied retroactively, that was another matter. He raised the issue of setting up separate committees to wall off Christie from his fund-raising. Christie thought that was too cute by half, that it wouldn’t pass the smell test. He thought it would cause a serious political problem for the ticket. He was also worried about the potential impact on his state, that it would put New Jersey at risk in future bond underwriting.

Romney then raised a question that Christie took as a sign that he was at the top of his list of candidates, although accounts of exactly what was said or intended diverge. One version holds that Romney directly raised the issue of resignation. He said that the problem could be solved if Christie resigned as governor. Christie’s response was to laugh. After a moment of silence, Romney said directly, “Governor, are you prepared to resign to be my running mate?” Christie asked for more time to consider a response. He was not prepared to give an answer to a question like that on a cell phone connection. Immediately after he hung up, he told his friend that Romney had said to him that he wanted him to be his vice presidential candidate. The friend could not say that Romney had made a flat-out offer, but Christie certainly believed it was the closest thing possible to one. From those familiar with Romney’s side of the call, it was not a direct offer. Romney was still mulling his choices. He was in the process of making calls to others on his list to raise other issues that might complicate their selection. He said to Christie that based on what his campaign knew about the SEC rule, there was no way he could put Christie on the ticket unless Christie resigned. But he did not directly ask Christie to do so. Christie’s friends and advisers believed the call signified that he was Romney’s first choice. Those around Romney disagree. One person familiar with the conversation said “it was conceivable” that Christie came away convinced that he was Romney’s top choice and had just been offered the job, but that that was a misreading of events. Romney was not at a point of making any decision. He was only trying to determine whether it was even possible to continue to consider Christie. “I
think he was wondering whether Chris was a viable person to stay on the list at all,” one Romney adviser said. Romney reported back to Myers that resigning would understandably be a major concern for the New Jersey governor. To Romney’s question about resigning, Christie’s initial response—a laugh—had made clear he would not do so. After that phone call, Romney and Christie had no further conversations about joining the ticket.

The
New York Post,
citing sources
, reported in late August that Christie had declined to resign to become vice president because he doubted that Romney could win the election and didn’t want to jeopardize his own political standing or his future options. The story, which included discussion of the pay-to-play rule, infuriated the New Jersey governor, who felt it mischaracterized the position he had been put in by Romney, which was an either/or choice: governor or vice presidential candidate.

A Romney adviser said the campaign never found an adequate solution to the pay-to-play rule as it might affect sitting governors running for president or vice president. They came away convinced that the rule will have a potentially significant effect on sitting governors who decide to seek the presidency in the future.

•   •   •

Romney had thought he might be able to settle on a running mate by early July, but the process ran longer than he and Myers had anticipated. Romney had asked that he be presented with choices, not a consensus candidate. He was personally familiar with all the serious contenders, having actively campaigned with all of them. They had appeared on Sunday shows in behalf of the campaign and done events apart from the candidate, all monitored by Boston. He solicited opinions from his senior staff, listening mostly and never hinting which way he was leaning. He asked friends and family and political associations who they thought would be good and why. Everyone had an opinion, except Myers, who chose to remain neutral throughout the process. The campaign conducted no polls to gauge the strengths of potential running mates, as some nominees had done. Nor did Romney conduct face-to-face interviews with those he was considering, though other nominees usually did them. He had a different view. “The formal interview wasn’t going to be as valuable as what he learned from them on the road,” Myers said. “So when he was working with these people and campaigning with them, he was taking the measure of [them]. He wanted to reserve the opportunity to do that [interview] with the final person he chose before he made the final ask.”

Everyone on the short list had issues, pros and cons. Ryan came with all the controversy surrounding his budget and its radical changes to Medicare. Pawlenty lacked the charisma that would help to energize conservatives and
make them feel better about Romney. Christie, in addition to pay-to-play, had a personality guaranteed to overshadow Romney. Portman had the Washington experience that Romney lacked, but was tied to the Bush presidency. Rubio was talented but untested. But he had another issue. As a Florida legislator he had brushed up against a financial scandal involving the Florida Republican Party.
In addition, then-representative David Rivera
, a close friend and fellow officeholder, was under federal investigation for campaign finance irregularities. There was no evidence of wrongdoing by Rubio, but among at least some Romney advisers there was concern that Rivera could be indicted before the election, and if that were to happen the story could become a major distraction.
*
Myers said, however, that the issue did not keep Rubio off the short list of contenders. “Mitt received a number of completed vets, all of which were viable candidacies, and Marco was one of them,” she said

Myers met with Romney at his summer home on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire on July 2. She had taken the fruits of all the research—the personal documents, materials from the public search, policy positions—and woven them into narratives for each prospective candidate. Myers said that at that point Romney had all the information he needed if he wanted to make his decision before leaving for a trip to Europe and the Middle East later in the month. For his own reasons, Romney decided he wasn’t ready. “He didn’t feel he had to do it and he wasn’t ready to make it,” Myers said.

•   •   •

In the summer of 2008, Obama had taken a trip to Europe, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The tour was a political triumph, capped by an outdoor rally in Berlin with two hundred thousand people in attendance. Obama’s overseas journey was so successful politically that John McCain’s team decided it had to bring him back down to earth or risk losing the race before the conventions ever took place. The campaign ran an ad calling Obama the biggest celebrity in the world and comparing him to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Romney, who was certainly not a world celebrity, was scheduled for a smaller version of the same thing: a trip that would take him to London for the opening of the Summer Olympics, to Israel for meetings with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a speech about Middle East policy, and a final stop in Poland. He hoped to piggyback off the opening of the summer games to remind voters back home about his success in turning around the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics and then use the rest of the trip to fill out his foreign policy vision. His schedule included fund-raisers with American expats in London and Jerusalem. The trip also promised to draw attention, wanted or
unwanted, to the fact that a horse that Ann Romney partially owned would be competing in the dressage events—otherwise known as “horse ballet”—at the Olympics. The trip had been on the schedule for some time, but as the departure neared there was a debate inside Romney’s organization about the advisability of going abroad for nearly a week, given that foreign policy was an afterthought to most voters and that the time could be better spent in the battleground states.

On the eve of the trip, Romney spoke to the VFW convention in Las Vegas and delivered a scathing attack on Obama. “In dealings with other nations, he has given trust where it is not earned, insult where it is not deserved, and apology where it is not due,” he said. This was as tough as any speech Romney had delivered in the campaign. He criticized Obama’s handling of virtually every region of the world: Israel, Egypt, Iran, Russia, China, Poland. His speech contained some of the muscularity of Reagan’s rhetoric, but what many people, at home and abroad, wondered at that moment was whether Romney would model his policies after those of George W. Bush, who often bucked the Republican foreign policy establishment, or of George H. W. Bush, who embodied it. Would he be able to use his trip to offer any clearer sense of whether he would represent a real departure from the policies of the Obama administration, or mostly a rhetorical one? And would anyone care, given the state of the economy?

Romney flew overnight to London, the first bit of bad logistical planning. His policy director, Lanhee Chen, and a few foreign policy advisers accompanied him, but no senior member of the political team was aboard, nor were any of his most senior communications advisers. His schedule called for him to give an interview to NBC anchor Brian Williams the day of his arrival and then on subsequent days meet with a variety of British officials and attend the opening ceremonies at the games. It was a busy but not taxing schedule, with no tricky foreign policy issues to worry about. Romney got off to a disastrous start. During the interview with Williams, he appeared to criticize the host country’s security preparations. Citing news reports, he said, “It’s hard to tell just how well it will turn out. There are a few things that were disconcerting.” The British press erupted. “Mitt the Twit,” the tabloid
Sun
trumpeted the next morning. Prime Minister David Cameron offered a snappish comparison of security challenges for the games in a city the size of London versus one the size of Salt Lake City. London mayor Boris Johnson used Romney as a punching bag before a Hyde Park audience the night before the opening ceremonies. “There are some people who are coming from around the world who don’t yet know about all the preparations we’ve done to get London ready in the last seven years,” Johnson said. “I hear there’s a guy, there’s a guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know whether we’re ready. He wants to know
whether we’re ready? Are we ready?” From the sixty thousand people came a thunderous response: “Yeeeeeaaaaahhhh!” they shouted in unison.

In Israel, Romney gave a speech about the Middle East and the Iranian threat. At a fund-raiser for Americans, whose guests included Sheldon Adelson, Romney suggested that the Palestinian culture was inferior to that of the Israelis and that the differences explained why the Israeli economy was far more prosperous. An Associated Press report published as the Romney entourage was heading for Poland quoted Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official, as saying Romney had made a “racist statement.” Stuart Stevens, who had joined the trip in London after the first day’s troubles, complained bitterly about the coverage, but the campaign could not counter the narrative of ineptitude that had started to take shape in London and had now hardened into conventional wisdom. In Poland, Romney gave an eloquent speech, but by then there was only one story to be written about the week.
A
Guardian
writer dubbed
Romney’s trip the “insult-the-world tour.” The pounding he was taking for his perceived missteps and maladroit comments overshadowed any substance he was trying to offer. The trip ended with the traveling press, which had been given no access to Romney the entire week, shouting questions at him as he was leaving Pilsudski Square in Warsaw, where he had laid a wreath at the Polish Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. “What about your gaffes?” Phil Rucker shouted. Romney didn’t even look over as he walked to his waiting car. “Governor Romney,” Ashley Parker shouted, “do you feel that your gaffes have overshadowed your foreign trip?” Rick Gorka, who was the traveling press person, shouted at the press corps, “Kiss my ass. This is a holy site for the Polish people. Show some respect.” Gorka later apologized for his outburst, but the verbal dustup seemed a fitting conclusion to a trip that produced days of ridicule for the candidate.