A Tale of Two Romneys

By JOE KLEIN

What a nice guy! Mitt Romney is all humble and reasonable, a human goose-down comforter lulling the Iowans who have come to hear him at a classic heartland cafe in downtown Newton on a Saturday morning. "I don't think anybody votes for yesterday," he says, streaming balm. "We vote for tomorrow. Elections are about the future." Romney's version of the future sounds as if he's pickpocketed the polling data used by Democrats roaming the cornfields, with an occasional Republican nod to lower taxes and a strong defense. He talks about the need for an alternative-energy plan, better schools, better jobs and universal health insurance but not "Hillarycare, socialized medicine." That (inaccurate) slap is about as nasty as it gets. He doesn't even mention illegal immigrants. Suddenly I can foresee a re-reborn Romney, slipping toward the political center in a general election.

On second thought, nope. This guy is, literally, unbelievable and completely at odds with the Romney festering on television screens and in mailings throughout Iowa and New Hampshire. That Romney is nonstop negative, and jingo-crazed about the perils of illegal immigration. He offers exclamations, not balm: John McCain wants to make 'em citizens! Mike Huckabee gave them college scholarships! And McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts! And Huckabee pardoned all these criminals when he was Governor of Arkansas, while Romney pardoned not a single one of his Massachusetts felons!

All these claims are accurate, or nearly so, and well within the smarmy bounds of political advertising. The problem is schizophrenia: negative Romney on television, positive Romney on the stump. Moderate Massachusetts Mitt vs. Raging Romney of the primaries. "Pay attention to both," New Hampshire's Concord Monitor wrote in an extraordinary editorial, "and you're left to wonder if there's anything at all at his core."

There are limits in politics. You can get away with changing a position --perhaps Romney really did see the light on abortion, not just the results of an Iowa focus group -- but you can't just reinvent yourself out of whole cloth. You can go negative on your opponents, but it's a stretch to attack them for taking the same positions -- on immigration, most notably -- that you used to take, especially when you keep getting caught having illegals tend your garden. The sheer cynicism is driving Romney's Republican opponents nuts. He is wildly unpopular among his peers. "I just hate the guy," says a rival campaign manager. "If we can't win, I want to be sure he loses."

After Romney's ethereal performance in Newton, I drove to Indianola, where Huckabee was holding a clown-car event, trying to stuff hundreds of supporters and dozens of camera crews into an upstairs room meant to hold about 20. Huckabee had lost control of his Christian calm and spent most of his stump speech railing against Romney. This was pretty shocking for a primary, where attacks tend to be muffled because the losers eventually support the winner. Huckabee was particularly miffed by Romney's ad about the pardons. He told the crowd the story of one pardon -- an Iraq-war vet who came home, worked his way through college and wanted to become a police officer but couldn't because he had fired a BB gun at a friend when he was 13 years old. "Now, how many of you would have granted a pardon in that case? Raise your hands." The result was a unanimous show of hands. "Well, that wasn't one of my pardons," Huckabee said. "That was a pardon Mitt Romney refused to grant in Massachusetts."

It might have been an effective gambit had Huckabee stopped there. But two days later, he held a memorable press conference in which he announced that he had produced an anti-Romney ad ... but he wasn't going to air it ... except for the entire press corps, which he proceeded to do. This attempt to turn the other cheek while slapping his opponent was greeted, appropriately, with derisive laughter. In his spasm of attacks, though, Huckabee did raise an important point: "If a person becomes President by being dishonest," he said, "he won't start being honest when he gets there."

As George H.W. Bush learned, you can't run for President pretending to be one thing and succeed in office as someone else (Bush ran as a viciously negative, antitax populist instead of the thoughtful, tax-raising moderate that he actually was). Romney reminds me a bit of Bush the Elder. He seems very intelligent. His candidacy had real potential. But I don't think Romney believes a word he says on any of the red-meat issues that he's been using to bludgeon his opponents. Which is why he says those things only on television, where he doesn't have to look anyone in the eye.