AP
Obama
Albert Hunt
WASHINGTON: If Barack Obama and Mitt Romney face each other next year, they might bring the highest combined IQ of any presidential race.
They are super smart men, who quickly absorb data, policy boffins able to analyse complicated choices.
Also, in a business that places a premium on personal and political relations, neither relishes that sort of camaraderie or cajoling; they both appear aloof and spend little quality time with fellow politicians.
There are profound differences between these two likely 2012 nominees. One is a 50-year-old African-American from a broken family, a community organiser who spent a dozen years in the state legislature and senate, and a moderately liberal Democrat. The other is a 64-year-old Mormon, born to a family of financial and political means, a successful businessman with only four years of government experience, and a moderately conservative Republican.
Yet in style and brain power there are surprising similarities. They both are graduates of Harvard Law School; Obama was the editor of the Law Review; Romney simultaneously got an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Romney
AP
On their signature health-care measures – Romney’s passed in Massachusetts in 2006, and Obama’s national plan passed in 2010 – their approaches were alike substantively and politically. Each mastered the details of the problem and the proposals.
They both are “wicked smart”, says Jonathan Gruber, a health-care economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who advised on both measures, meeting with Romney once and Obama twice. Each showed a willingness to take a risk, telling political advisers that if the policy was right, the politics would take care of itself.
And they worked the political channels assiduously. As governor, Romney visited the Democratic legislative leaders Robert Travaglini, president of the Massachusetts Senate, and Salvatore DiMasi, speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, at their homes on a Sunday afternoon to make a personal appeal. The president cancelled a foreign trip and helped tip the balance for a narrow congressional victory on his health-care proposal.
Both are capable of old-fashioned political schmoozing. Obama hosts a bipartisan group of politicians at the White House residence to watch the Super Bowl each year. Teetotalling Romney took staff and a couple of Democratic supporters to a Boston bar to celebrate his health-care victory.
However, that is not their forte. Obama, unlike some of his predecessors, almost never uses the presidential retreat at Camp David to court other politicians. And the White House acknowledges that he rarely has members of Congress to the second-floor residence of the White House.
The president has played golf in Washington 44 times, almost always with a small group of Chicago friends or staff loyalists. The only members of Congress he has invited to join him are the Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner of Ohio, for a politically motivated game last July, and the assistant House minority leader, Jim Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat.
Romney also rarely spends weekends or social occasions with other politicians or top supporters. He prefers family and friends, often connected to the Mormon church.
Some presidents, such as Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, felt comfortable with diverse constituencies. One of the reasons Obama and Clinton, despite their public professions of admiration, feel so coolly about each other is this difference in demeanour.
While Obama and Romney command fierce loyalty from long-time aides, neither much connects with political peers. In the last presidential run, both Senator John McCain and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee took a dislike to Romney, finding him cold and calculating. More than a few Democratic politicians use the term cool or cold to describe the president.
These two have been circling each other for a while. Seven years ago, they were the featured speakers at a gridiron dinner, a forum of Washington journalists. Romney was in the middle of his gubernatorial term and Obama had just been elected to the senate.
Both speeches, intended to be politically humorous, were smashes. Romney closed his with a song. Obama was so impressed he could pull that off that 15 months later, at another gridiron dinner, he also delivered a song, telling associates his inspiration was Romney’s earlier performance. – Washington Post-Bloomberg
