Mitt's Son Says He Never Wanted to be President Anyway

If you thought the tale of how Mitt Romney lost the general election was already told, you would be wrong. Because there is so much left to tell, like how Mitt never wanted to be President anyway. 

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If you thought the tale of how Mitt Romney lost the general election was already told, you would be wrong. Because there is so much left to tell, like how Mitt never wanted to be President anyway.

At least, that's what Tagg Romney says in this new Boston Globe report on what went wrong with Romney's campaign. While the rest of the piece seems to say the problems lay in the Romney campaign's lack of technical advantage, and refusal to introduce the world to Mitt Romney, the human being, this little morsel from the Republican's son points to a larger problem:

“He wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my life. He had no desire to . . . run,” said Tagg, who worked with his mother, Ann, to persuade his father to seek the presidency. “If he could have found someone else to take his place . . . he would have been ecstatic to step aside. 

So, yeah, that might explain why Mitt lost. Not wanting the job you need to publicly campaign for more than a year to get is step one in the "Not Getting Elected Guide for Dummies" book. Again, the rest of the mammoth piece, which you really should read, paints a larger picture of the struggle between Mitt's inner circle and his campaign advisors over whether they should humanize Mitt, which was ultimately their downfall. And, also, the Obama campaign had more staff and cooler tech stuff, like an app named Gordon, "after the person who punched Houdini in the stomach shortly before the magician died," and Narwhal, named after the Internet's favorite arctic whale.

Mitt never stood a chance against Narwhal.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.
Connor Simpson is a former staff writer for The Wire. His work has appeared in Business Insider and CityLab.