In the lead-up to "The Choice 2012," FRONTLINE is publishing "The Artifacts of Character,” a series of rarely seen objects that elucidate key moments and experiences in the lives of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

We've asked some of the country's leading journalists covering the candidates to join us each Friday to discuss the week's artifacts and what they can tell us about the men who are competing for the presidency.

We'll be joined by:

Jodi Kantor, author of "The Obamas" bit.ly

Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, co-authors of "The Real Romney:" bit.ly

David Maraniss, author "Barack Obama: The Story" bit.ly

Jason Horowitz, Washington Post reporter cover Romney's campaign: wapo.st

We're happy to note that James Fallows, longtime national correspondent for The Atlantic, will be joining us as well: bit.ly

To recap, here are the week's artifacts:

Artifact one: Barack Obama's Early Poetry to.pbs.org

Artifact two: Mitt Romney Protesting the Protestors: to.pbs.org

Artifact three: Listen to Obama Make the Case for Activism: to.pbs.org

Artifact four: When Mitt Romney Bet on Staples: ow.ly

And here is a full-length trailer for "The Choice 2012:" to.pbs.org

Hi everyone,
What strikes me most about artifact 2 is how HAPPY Romney looks. We're so used to that reluctant, grimace/grin on the stump that it's astonishing to see him so at ease.
Here he is, in the middle of the 1960s, mere miles from the epicenter of the college campus counter culture, and he looks like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Here he has found protection in the blazer pocket of the establishment. It's these spaces that he often feels most at home.
Romney was the Johnny Appleseed of school spirit pep squads. A bad athlete, he formed or innovated such groups at Cranbrook, his boarding school, and at BYU, the religious institution which in many molded him ever since. He was Mr. School Spirit at Stanford too.

I’m going to take an extra comment space up for some context!
In a later speech, his father George Romney, then in the Nixon administration, spoke of his son’s zeal for the California college, including the time Mitt lured rivals from the U Cal into a trap where his classmates “captured them all and shaved their heads and painted them red.”
Here we see Romney as a class clown away from home, unwilling to let history, or politics, or weed smoke intrude on his collegiate paradise.
This period fascinates, I think, not because it was a fork between the establishment and the anti-establishment, no question which direction Romney was headed, but because it was the last time Romney could have veered off the path of orthodoxy.

Mormons had a presence in northern California, but it wasn’t Utah. And it certainly wasn’t the missionary life, which is what Romney left Stanford for, and it certainly wasn’t BYU, the school he returned to from his mission instead of Stanford. (In that same speech, George Romney said his teenage son often said, “‘The one place I will not go is BYU!’”)
I often wonder how Romney's life would have been different if he had stayed at Stanford. He wouldn’t have grown his hair out or taken up folk with folk singers, but he would certainly have faced more questioning of his beliefs -- political, cultural and theological -- than he did. In this picture we see a canvas, that, if not blank, still has plenty of room to fill in.
Thoughts?

Greetings all -- I will be able to join more extensively this afternoon (EDT), after some deadline Qs here at the magazine.

By way of intro I wanted to express my enthusiasm for this "artifacts" approach, in offering a way to make these next 6+ weeks seem richer than the simple campaign coverage. The almost-unbelievable improbability and complexity of Obama's own background has become so familiar that, apart from birthers, people barely stop to notice it any more. One of the many virtues of David Maraniss's book was reminding us of that -- as does this poem and recorded speech.

But there is more to Romney's saga than he or his unfortunate campaign has left us see recently. Glad for the chance to discuss. Back soon.

I am delighted to be part of this group, but decidedly take the role of technoidiot, so whether I am actually now on a branch is uncertain to me, and if I am, like a cat, I will need a fireman to get me down. That is you, Jason.
I'll start with Artifact 1 - "Pops." The conventional approach toward "Pops" and other of Obama's early writings is to critique them with condescension or call them pretentious. Neither take interests me in the least. What interests me is what that poem and other writings show about who he was and what he was thinking. Obama wrote Pops as a sophomore at Occidental, when his classmates and friends almost to a person called him Barry. This was his first public expression of what he wanted to become, Barack.

"Pop" to me is an expression of Obama's search for self identity, which is the common thread of almost all of his early writing. He had grown up "hapa" in Hawaii, with his white grandparents, mostly, and though since birth he dealt with race in America because of the color of his skin, culturally he was learning what it meant to be African American. Some people have said "Pop" is about his white grandfather, Stanley Dunham. I think it is more than that, and also includes some of the sensibility of an old black poet he met in Honolulu, Frank Marshall Davis. Barack is seeing parts of both of them in himself.

Hello all. Artifact #2 is a pivotal moment when Romney is at Stanford protesting the antiwar protesters. In "The Real Romney" we tell the backstory of how George Romney visited Mitt at Stanford as George was returning from his famous first trip to Vietnam, the one during which he later said he got a "brainwashing" from US military leaders. George, at the time of the Stanford visit, was strongly pro-war, and his son absorbed that view. Mitt, of course, did not serve in the military, and, tellingly, Mitt later echoed his father's view that the Vietnam War was mistaken policy, saying: "I think we were brainwashed. If it wasn't a blunder to move into Vietnam, I don't know what is."
From The Real Romney, page 76
books.google.com

Analyzing the poem in my book, I wrote: "Pop" reveals more about the poet than the subject, or composite subjects. Obama, the poet, like the memoirist, shows a keen awareness of otherness and life's duality. He looks at Pop and sees something that repels him and attracts him, that he wants to run away from yet knows he must embrace. Pop makes himself small by what he says: obama shrinks in his physical presence. The same stain on his pants, smelling the same smell, blood rushing from one face to the other. Looking in his own mirror first and then in the reflection of Pop's glasses, he realizes that the old man, who bores him and twitches unhappily in his stuffed chair with whiskey and cigarette ashes, nonetheless knows all that he knows.

Hi, all. On Obama the poet: I've long been fascinated by the two years that Obama spent at Occidental College in Los Angeles after graduating from high school. This is the period in which Barry - the pot-smoking, basketball-playing slacker from Hawaii - became Barack - the serious young man who began throwing himself into books, examining his identity, and reflecting on his responsibilities as a citizen of the world. We see, in these poems, flickers of the budding writer, too, a man hungry to harness the power of language and rhetoric, and who chooses his words carefully. I can imagine him laboring over the lines in a booth at his local pizza joint, Casa Bianca, a slice of (revolting, in my opinion) Hawaiian pizza on the table.

To add to Kranish's post on the Stanford photo: Mitt Romney has long been an institutionalist - somebody who believes in working within the system, not fighting it. That mentality is reflected in this photo of young Mitt protesting the anti-war demonstrators. He rejected the counterculture movement, rejected these fierce challenges to authority he was seeing among his peers. Even though Stanford was hardly the epicenter of the anti-war movement, my sense is that Romney was far more at home at Brigham Young University, the heavily Mormon, deeply conservative campus to which he transferred after his stint as a missionary in France. Here was a place that enlisted students to spy on professors suspected of liberalism.

It strikes me that because of the rise of Obama as the first president who came of age AFTER Vietnam, Romney's actions during that era, so strikingly portrayed by this artifact and by the writings of others on this branch, are not considered with the same weight as those of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Kerry, John McCain. McCain and Kerry fought in the war, Clinton, W. and Bush avoided it, in very different ways, but Clinton seemed the most embattled in the cultural wars that waged in America decades after the real war. Romney is the most like Cheney - someone who supported the war at the time but had no interest in fighting in it.

On Romney at Staples: I'm struck by Romney's bullishness about Staples here, because he was initially skeptical about the business plan. (He and his partners initially dismissed Staples founder Tom Stemberg's assertions that business owners were overpaying for office supplies.) Of course, Stemberg was right, and ultimately Romney and his Bain colleagues saw the light, winning a handsome return on their investment. Also, am I right that Romney says in this video that some people call venture capitalists like him "vulture capitalists," and that "the term is probably appropriate"? If so, that's a bit of a gem, given how hard Romney and his allies pushed back during the primary campaign when his GOP rivals called him just that.

you are right, scott. Obama liked hawaiian pizza with the pineapple slices on it. But my sense is he wrote this poem in the summer between his freshman and sophomore years while he was still in Honolulu. He submitted it to Feast, the student literary journal, along with presenting it in an English class that fall. The co-editors of Feast were Alexandra McNear and Tom Grauman. Both Barrry (Barack) and Grauman were hot for Alex and competing for her attention. When Grauman rejected another piece Obama submitted to Feast, they had a heated confrontation. It was more about the girl than the words.

People often ask what surprised me in our research for "The Real Romney." One thing that surprised me is that, despite the extraordinary amount of attention given to Romney's role in Staples, it was a relatively small deal in the context of the roughly 100 deals Romney did in 15 years at Bain Capital: $2.5 million in, and about $13 million out. By comparison, we discovered that a little-known deal for an Italian version of the Yellow Pages had Bain putting $50 million in and getting more than $1 billion back. Romney himself may have made well over $20 million just on that deal, one of his most profitable ever. A Bain partner said it was like be "thrashed" by "the lucky stick." See Ch. 6.
amazon.com

Thanks for that, David. Isn't it always more about the girl than the words, at that age anyway?

On the Obama activism speech: In light of the current controversy over Romney's "47 percent" remarks, it's striking to hear Obama say these words: "When I see poor people on the street, those are my relatives." This is consistent with Obama's outlook, today, I think, but listen to the clarity of that rebuttal to the Romney worldview, delivered almost two decades ago. We hear, too, Obama practicing themes he would return to in his coming political career: conciliation, self-examination, a sense of shared history. This is Obama at his most didactic - preaching to whites that reading James Baldwin doesn't automatically make them true supporters of diversity, and telling blacks that "Joe Six-Pack" and "rednecks" are part of diversity, too.

That is very perceptive about Obama then and now, Scott. The right likes to portray Obama as a closet leftist who will show his true political colors if reelected. That is what the despicable D'Souza diatribes are all about. His history defies that in every respect. He was a bit more to the left as a young man, but his instincts have always been more all-embracing than ideologically rigid.

Precisely right. I wonder if this is partly why the false attacks on Obama from the far right - he's a closet radical, he's a Muslim "other," etc. - don't appear to have gained all that much traction beyond the audience predisposed to agree. One can find a lot to criticize about Obama's first term, sure, but the notion that he's some militant leftist should be plainly false at this point. And as you say, that belies his upbringing and political education.

Just as people have asked where Obama truly stands on the ideological spectrum, they have asked that about Romney. Romney called himself "independent," "moderate" and "progressive" as he ran for office in Massachusetts, and this year said he was "severely conservative." Often, we are asked, "which is he, really?" And, "which version would govern?" There's no question that Romney has changed some of his views, as well as his description of himself; the question has been why and what it says about what kind of president he would be. I explored this issue in a recent piece that compares Romney's attendance at the 1964 GOP convention to his nomination at the 2012 gathering.
t.co

Dear all,
It's wonderful to be here with you today, though like Jim, I'll be able to post more in a few hours. The artifact that really popped for me was Obama's 1994 activism speech. It shows the startling consistency of Barack Obama's rhetoric from the Harvard period ('88-91) through 2008. During those twenty years-- the key period of his rise-- he gave the same speech again, again, again and again. He spoke about collective responsibility and overcoming artificial barriers, and he spoke about his own life experience. A lot.
This is not a rising politician who was zigzagging from one point to another. He was refining an argument and message, and its apotheosis was arguably his 2004 convention speech.

But the consistency of that message-- the fact that there was really one Barack Obama uberspeech, in addition to the many others he gave-- helps explain why so many people feel let down by his rhetoric as president. (We saw this most recently with his convention speech, which disappointed lots of people.) As president, he can't give the same speech he's given his whole life. Biographical speeches don't work that often in the presidency, and speaking in broad philosophical strokes is not enough. So one of the most powerful political tools Obama developed was not available to him in the presidency. (Though a few of his presidential speeches have been terrific, especially the Tuscon speech after Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot.)

Rejoining the conversation, and I find each of these items very interesting. The one that is most arresting to me is Obama's speech in 1994, a year before 'Dreams' came out. [And, as I am typing this, I see that Jodi Kantor is making just the same point.]

Obama's voice -- intonation, accent -- is interestingly different then from now, though stress patterns the same. But his message is remarkably connected to the man we know from (a) 'Dreams,' (b) his famous 'Race in America' speech, (c) his inaugural address, and (d) what he's been saying more and more clearly since his Ottumwa speech last fall. An interesting aspect of his speeches is that they have few great "lines," but strikingly developed *ideas.* More in a second.

That's right, Jodi, and it goes back even a decade before that speech, even before he became a community organizer in Chicago. In 1982 he wrote a letter to a girlfriend in which he described how his life was forcing him to an all-embracing philosophy. "Caught without a class, a structure, or tradition to support me, in a sense the choice to take a different path is made for me," he wrote. "The only way to assuage my feelings of isolation are to absorb A

p.s. Jim may be too humble to mention this, but he's a former presidential speechwriter, so I'm especially interested to hear his thoughts on how the 1994/2004 style Obama speeches differ from those he's given as president.

...sorry for that technoglitch....

...to absorb all the traditons [and all the classes; make them mine, mine theirs."

The themes that strike me as most connected from that 1994 speech to the man running for re-election in 2012 are:

- In This Together
- Diversity is hard, but it makes us stronger. (This, by the way, is my main Insight About America based on spending a lot of my life outside the US)
- Projecting your own sympathies across racial / cultural / gender / generational divides is hard, but is necessary

Speeches that sound good, while you're listening, don't always look as effective on a page. Bill Clinton is the classic example: If you read the transcript of his DNC barnburner, you'll think, What's the big deal? Obama's are often the opposite: More effective when read than heard.

So, to answer Jodi's and David's direct question on presidential rhetoric: In fact I am impressed by the wholeness of Obama's rhetoric over these past decades, rather than the differences.

As incumbent president, he's obviously in a different position because (a) he has a real, imperfect record to defend, and (b) a lot of what he has to do in this campaign is purely defensive and "drawing contrasts." Ie, "I may not be perfect, but look at this other guy." Still I'm struck by consistency of main themes.

Will turn to Romney now.

Boy is that ever true about rhetoric and delivery, Jim. Clinton is an actor; Obama less of one. Clinton writes for the ear, obama for the mind.

Now, about the Romney artifacts, starting with the Stanford photo:

I may be the only one grizzled enough to remember how "early" in the Vietnam cycle 1966 was. Mainstream opinion hadn't really switched; campus protests were scattered and not yet fully focused on Vietnam. If that same photo, of a smiling pro-war Mitt Romney, had been taken in 1969, it would have been much more freighted:
- It would have implied that he was really choosing a side on what was by then the embroiling national issue; similarly
-That he was personally engaged, taking a stand, in this big controversy.

As others have noted, it is amazing how separate from the central national issue of his young-adult years Romney was -- and remains.

Back again. The idea of Hawaiian pizza threw me for a loop (a bad one) and I needed to recover. The notion that Obama is primarily a writer is no doubt true, but I also wonder, David, if he isn't a bit of an actor like Clinton, just not as a convincing one on every platform. The way Obama can turn on the magic on a big stage, has always been remarkable, but he has such a hard time working a small room. The recent Vanity Fair piece made the point that he doesn't do inauthentic well, and that he takes pride in this inability. But I wonder if he wouldn't be a little better served if he had that arrow in his quiver.

And to continue that Romney-and-Vietnam thought:

It is probably a good thing, for America, that we're spending virtually no time talking about how-and-why Romney ended up, Cheney-style, not serving in the war of his era, which he supported.

But David M, from his work on Clinton, will testify about how interesting and non-inevitable this is -- as will anyone who remembers the controversies over actual-decorated-veteran John Kerry, Dan Quayle, George W. Bush, and of course Bill Clinton above all.

Jason, Obama absolutely hates the idea that he is an actor. He said it himself in the Vanity Fair story, in practically the same words I've heard from aides over the years. Which is interesting, because every pol has to be a bit of an actor. You have to give upbeat speeches when you're feeling down, and grave speeches when you're feeling up, and so on. And as you say, he's a very good performer-- even his law students thought so-- and so it's interesting that he hates that part of the job, or professes to. A clue about his incredibly complex relationship with politics, I think. To be continued in a moment...

Now, let's come to Romney and Staples. What strikes me, as a Romney amateur, is a matter of presentation. His public style is exactly the same! The way he deals with jokes, the endearing (to me) but noticeable man-teleported-from-the-50s demeanor. I say this is "charming" because it reminds me of friends of my dad's back in those days.

But on the question of Romney's role in Staples, I call on the sessions own Michael Kranish and Scott Helman! You're the ones who have delved into this story. There's a line of argument, for instance here in Daily KOS (bit.ly), that is drawn from your own reporting and says that he is exaggerating his role there. What's the right way to think about this?

And to bring this question of authentic, inauthentic back to Romney, from whom it has never been far, I think that's what has been so fascinating about the Boca video. It gave a view of Romney speaking with apparent conviction about the 47 percent, but those events are often performances as well. I wonder how much of it was him working his audience. But --substance apart -- he was good at it.
And that's why that Staples clip is so interesting. You see a guy just learning how to make these performances, actually preparing himself on camera to deliver, trying to unwooden himself. (New word!) It's not natural. Surface wise, that's a major difference between these two, Obama can sometimes look like a natural.

Also, the idea that Obama is bad at working a small room is a commonly held perception that's a little bit wrong, I think. I've heard of some cases in which he bombed, but he can do it incredibly well, with sincerity and charm and just the right comment for each person. At recent high-dollar fundraisers, he's shown up knowing one perfect detail about every attendee's family or recent business transactions. And in comparison to your man Romney... well, is Romney really as bad in small rooms as we've been led to believe?

Interesting to hear Jason Horowitz -- who has seen Romney on the stump much more than I have -- give this compare-and-contrast with Romney of the Staples era. Which leads me to:

- If the Romney of Staples was "just learning" how to make these pitches, and therefore was wooden at it, then the woodenness of today's campaign appearances may also reflect his surprisingly long "still learning" stage of dealing with ordinary people. Whereas:

- I agree that the Boca video showed a person who sounded entirely different. More fluid, more in command, no pauses and "Gee willikers" type corniness. In a way he would be more effective politically if he could show that self. He's selling the same ideas, and might as well do it powerfully.

Discussion colleagues: I must now bow out for the next two hours, will catch up with threads on return.

The different path he saw for himself even back then was to rise above the divisions of culture and society; politics and economics, and embrace something larger - embrace it all. To make a particular choice would be to limit him, he wrote, because "taken separately, they are unacceptable and untenable."

Good point Jodi. And hi! One thing that Obama's bundlers often tell me is that their expectations for him in terms of warmth have been tempered over the years. Coming off of Clinton, they still wanted the love. Now they know they aren't going to get it, so they'll take the remembrance of a name or a birthday. Unlike the legions of FOBs, there's really only one of the super bundlers who Obama has chosen as a buddy. What I meant more is that he lacks the electricity that he brings on stage when in smaller, even public conversations. That's normal. It would be strange if he was speechifying instead of chatting. But I was watching Letterman the other day and it is often remarkable how halting he is in these chats. Part of that is the defending

the record instead of going bio and narrative part, but I wonder if his aides didn't wish that part of the performance were a little stronger.

And your point, Jodi, about Romney's talent in close quarters is spot on. The one thing you hear over and over, when you talk to his friends in the church, or in the boardroom, is how engaging he is. With him the problem has often been reaching out to those who are not in that comfortable community. I wonder what he thinks of Obama's law school chat!

Have you noticed the contrast with his wife? Michelle Obama rides that Letterman couch like a pro. Which is a change for her-- the Obamas' first appearance on Oprah is a really fascinating watch, in part because Michelle Obama 1.0 (before she became a political pro) looks so uncomfortable. Especially in contrast to her husband, who was getting huge applause and laughs and looking like he was loving every second.

Michele's embrace of the stage (and her husband's mannerisms in the convention speech!) has been remarkable. You know better than the rest of us what that transition must have been like for her. She came onto the scene without everyone eager to love her. That's one difference between her and Ann Romney, right? Everyone, even (especially?) the people who didn't like Mitt, wanted to like Ann. She's been the humanizer, which is a pretty big responsibility! The fact that Michelle had a similar role at the Dem convention, but storifying the storyteller, curious what you made of that.

Stopping back in for a breaking-news question for Jason Horowitz. Your piece wapo.st on the Mosbacher sisters has this "What!!?!?!!??" line:

"...or giddily relaying how Ann Romney, for whom Georgette has served on the host committee for several fundraisers in New York, privately reacted to Democratic attacks on her dressage-competing mare. (“My horse has more style and more class in its hoof than they do in their whole deal,” Lyn recounts.)"

What more can you tell us about this? This is not really going to help, on the "there is nothing I can do to connect with 'those people' in the 47%" front, right?

I will tell you my grand unified theory of Michelle Obama's convention speech-- but I need to do it in two hours, after I get back from an interview. Still, I want to leave you, Michael and Scott-- our Romney experts-- with a question, based on what you said about how Romney does better among fellow Mormons than in more diverse groups. In a recent story, my colleague Michael Barbaro reported that Romney chose to run again for president in part out of a desire to be "accepted by the world beyond his own close-knit community." How palpably did you feel this drive in your own Romney reporting? Is this a large part of why Romney, who seems uncomfortable in many ways in the political realm, is running? nytimes.com

To pick up the thread on Obama and acting: Wasn't this repulsion by political theater what led him to feel so ambivalent about getting involved in the causes of the day while on campus at Occidental? David surely knows this far better, but my memory of researching that period is that Obama was both enchanted and revolted by how powerful speech could be.

In answer to your question James, first, you are assuming that the 47 percent doesn't love dressage, which is not an assumption I am willing to make. More seriously, the challenge with Romney, and really the Romneys, is that their flubs, gaffes, whatever you want to call them, always seem to speak directly to his political weakness, that he is out of touch. That Ann Romney turned to some rich donors for compassion about her horse being victimized, well, that doesn't exactly turn the story on its head. (Though, Georgette and Lyn empathized!)

Quickly, on Ann and Michelle: It occurs to me reading all this their contrasting arcs in the realm of politics. It's like Michelle started out skeptical and cynical about politics, believing her husband was too good for such a disreputable profession. Now one gets the sense that she even enjoys the political spotlight a bit, and has come to see politics as a force for important change. Ann began almost naively drawn to politics, and then saw her good intentions battered by the harsh realities of running in high-profile races. She's grown comfortable again in the spotlight, but it's wounded-comfortable.

And to the excellent Michael Barbaro's story about Romney wanting to be accepted beyond his church ward and investor universe, I guess I would say wanting to be accepted by everyone is one thing, making it seem that you accept (and feel comfortable with) everyone is politically something else. I wonder where Obama falls on that spectrum. He doesn't seem to need need/want the big hug, but the second part of the equation sure has been important to him for a long time. (As evidenced by classroom lecture and just about every big speech he has given since.) I wonder what David, an expert on the neediness of Clinton and the self-sufficiency of Obama, thinks about this.

That's a great observation Scott.

obama is definitely an actor, and could be a very good one, in fact. Just listen to the audio version of Dreams and it becomes clear. He just has this notion this somewhat noble but in the end disingenous notion that he can separate that part of himself from politics and be "authentic."

You ain't alone in the old folks home here, Jim. I am there with you. You are right about 1966. Even a year later, in Madison, where the student protests were roiling, the protesters were still mostly wearing sport coats and the largest organization on campus was the Young Republicans. Everything was up in the air, unknown and undecided.

Exactly! It's admirable but impossible, and he must know it's impossible.

We are all needy, even the seemingly self sufficient. obama is just needy in a different way. Clinton needs people to exist. They are his oxygen. Obama needs recognition that he is good and different from the rest. When he was a minority party state senator, before the Dems won the majority in 2002, it would drive him crazy that the press was not paying greater attention to him.

To Jodi's question on Romney's motivations: I think it's true that he wants broader acceptance, and that that desire is partly what's behind his drive to be president. He's someone who cares about his legacy, and wants to be thought of/remembered as a man capable of solving the nation's hardest problems. (He used to say something to the effect of, "The Romneys were built to swim upstream." At the same time, he's not a political animal, has limited political instincts, and, one gets the sense, is averse to the kind of politicking it takes to win a race. (In this way, he's similar to Obama.) It's like Romney wishes he could say: Just give me the damn job. Don't make me campaign for it.

Folks, the day's events have taken me away, but I wanted to address the James Fallows question on Staples. My colleague Beth Healy and I wrote about this in Real Romney, pp. 139-141. As I mentioned, it was one of Bain's smaller deals, $2.5 mil in and about $13 million out. Bain was not the only investor, and cashed out relatively early. Romney served on the board for a time. As we write, "Romney hadn't stumbled on Staples on his own." Another firm played also played a role. Stemberg says that w/o Romney's help, Staples might not have happened, and thus says Mitt deserves credit for helping create all Staples jobs. Others say Romney cashed out before most jobs created. Staples gets a lot of attention, but there were 100 deals in 15 years.

Here's a link to a story that my Globe colleague Beth Healy wrote earlier this year about Staples, putting it in broader context regarding venture capital (Staples) and leveraged buyouts (many of Romney's Bain deals).
articles.boston.com

David, given that you dropped a Madison reference, I have to ask: Were you at UW?

Hello again -- Will catch up on a few of the recent themes.

- About Obama in small, informal groups. I have seen him only a few times this way, and he was very charming. The obvious contrast with Clinton is that you could still tell that for Obama it was "work," and he would look forward to being on his own; whereas Clinton never wanted the talk and being-with-other-people to end. I think Obama is closer to "normal" behavior here. Or -- very different point -- his nature is a lot easier for me to imagine.

-- Romney in small groups: on my limited exposure, very "nice," but little sense of how to make small talk. Like the famous stories of Nixon trying to chat up Vietnam protestors by talking football.

To this point by Scott H on Romney: "He's not a political animal, ,..is averse to the kind of politicking it takes to win a race. (In this way, he's similar to Obama.)"

What's interesting to me is how the shared, anti-Clintonesque aversion to politics leads Romney and Obama in different directions.

You get the feeling that Romney is entirely at ease with *complete* changes in position -- health care, immigration, the 100% certainty that if elected his China policy would be different from his hardline campaign talk -- because he thinks that everything about politics is sleazy. So why not go whole hog? With Obama, his lack of LBJ/WJC-style interest in political deal making may have left him naively vulnerable to Tea Party Congress

And on the earlier mention of Mormonism: In an often-bleak campaign landscape, I will take the *relative* lack of *open* anti-Mormon sentiment as a positive sign.

"Relative" compared with what it might have been; "open," allowing for the fact that a number of evangelicals may still be stewing about this. But it's interesting -- and for me overall positive -- that however this race turns out, it appears as if anti-Mormon prejudice won't be a first-order deciding factor.

To the Romney charm in small groups point, I'm reminded of this...
When the parents of Katie Biber, his campaign's longtime general counsel, were first introduced to Romney at a fundraiser in Missouri, Romney asked them, “‘How much are you guys donating?”

“You know,” Bob Biber recalled answering, “I’ve already donated my firstborn. I’m done.”

That's an intriguing idea, James - the notion that Romney's lack of concern about consistency might reflect in part his disdain for politics; that it's all a game to be played and won, and that the particulars don't much matter. I think the end has long been more important than the means for him: You do what you have to do to win elections. The trouble, of course, is that it catches up with you.

Many Mormons were more concerned about the anti-religious left's attacks on Romney than evangelicals. They are encouraged by the lack of vitriol thus far, if still wary.
That said, I still think there are some basic things that Romney hasn't entirely answered when it comes to his own experience. It's infantile and frankly wrong to ask Romney to answer for some of the more controversial policies of his church. I'm not sure it's inappropriate to ask a presidential candidate (and a lay prelate) what he thought about a ban on blacks that was the law of the land as he took on levels of greater authority in his church. He has said he was relieved when the ban was lifted. But did he think it was divine law or bad policy when it was in force?

Answer to Scott re Madison. Yes, I am from Madison and went to UW, was freshman there in 1967. My book They Marched into Sunlight is about the Dow protest there that October and a battle in Vietnam occuring simultaneously. Dick Cheney was in graduate school at Wisconsin then, avoiding the war and the protests both.

To Jason H, further on Mormonism: I do agree that, as with so many other topics, there is a weird opaqueness to Romney's handling of this issue.

On the one hand, I really feel for him about such simple anti-LDS bigotry he may have to deal with, from right or left. As I argued in the Atlantic a while ago. (See link).

On the other, it is strange for him to be *so* non-forthcoming about what must have been a major part of his life, his personality-formation, and his set of values. The best comparison here would be if Joe Lieberman were a nominee -- and decided to say virtually nothing about what Judaism meant to him or how it shaped his outlook. Many things are hard to imagine about a "Joementum" campaign, but that would be really odd.

That's great, David. I wasn't aware of that. I'm a proud UW alum, though my tenure there came in a far more peaceful era. I did, however, buy smoothies from one of the guys who blew up Sterling Hall back in the day. That was my sole link to '60/'70s radicalism, I think.

I totally agree James. Also, Romney's reluctance to talk about Mormonism, according to many of his best friends in the church, cost him the chance to tell his most compelling stories.

To Jason's point, the Mormons who spoke on Romney's behalf at the Republican convention were quite moving, I thought. Probably the best moments of the convention. Lots of stories out there like that, and yet we don't hear much of them. I know there's a political risk in too much pro-Mitt stuff from the LDS community, but if there were ever a time to soften perceptions of his heart, it's now.

To Scott's point, the individuals who spoke at the GOP who said they were helped by Romney gave very moving accounts; the audience was hushed and with them. They talked so early in the evening, however, that their accounts did not make most of the television networks. Instead, primetime was given to the Clint Eastwood encounter with the chair.
bostonglobe.com

To connect this Mormon theme, with the earlier one about the Romney/Obama shared natural distance from the game of politics, it is remarkable that:

- Obama, a cool-dispositioned introvert, has learned to be see undeniably effective at many of the performance skills of politics -- even if deep inside he still thinks of them as "work"; whereas

- Romney, who must have learned or intuited the techniques of sales very well, is still so startlingly inept at many of the most basic moves, responses, and instincts of political practice. (The Mormon connection is that letting his supporters tell their stories, or talking himself about the meaning of his faith, would pay off better than his current bland affect.)

Late greetings: for our future sessions I'll be back on CONUS time. I will do a pass-through now on many of the fascinating issues you all raised while it was nighttime in the Antipodes.

First, about Romney's "misunderstood" predicament. I confess that my heart does go out to him. Strictly as a human type, he reminds me of so many adult figures from my childhood -- my *parents'* friends, responsible small-town business figures, even though Romney's only a few years older than I am. As many of you have discussed, Romney certainly thinks of himself in these pillar-of-the-community ways, and no doubt has behaved that way in many private interactions. To be headed for the kind of ignominy that now seems in store must be painful, and puzzling.