In today’s newspaper in The Netherlands, an article about Mitt Romney’s single year at Stanford University in Palo Alto. The events are told by David Harris who was mentor of Mitt Romney and lived on the same floor, had many discussions. Harris became a leader in the anti-Vietnam War protest movement at Stanford. The students protested the cooperation of the University in participating in classified contracts with the military, assistance in supplying exam results and grades for the Selective Service as the 2-S deferment rules changed and launched a protest against the use of napalm. Harris was surprised when Mitt Romney positioned himself in opposition to the student protests in an anti-demonstration, link to article here.
May 20, 1966 Mitt Romney makes a political choice @Stanford U.
David Harris says Mitt Romney acted to please his father, George Romney, who decided to run for President on a pro-Vietnam War platform. After a visit to the Vietnam War theater in South-East Asia he responded to journalists and media ofbeing in full support of our boys fighting the Viet Cong. Early in 1967 he would change his position on the War saying he was brainwashed. From that very moment he lost all support in his party and never recovered. This turn of events became a first political lesson for his son Mitt. The other Republican candidates were Nixon and Goldwater.
Romney’s greatest weakness was his lack of foreign policy expertise and his need for a clear position on the Vietnam War. The press coverage of the trip focused on Vietnam and reporters were frustrated by Romney’s initial reluctance to speak about it
The qualities that helped give Romney success as an automotive industry executive worked against him as a presidential candidate; he had difficulty being articulate on any issue.
Nobody can sound more like the public George Romney than the real George Romney let loose to ramble, inevitably away from the point and toward some distant moral precept. The perception grew that Romney was gaffe-prone and a plodder.
Romney’s campaign did often focus on his core beliefs; a Romney billboard in New Hampshire read “The Way To Stop Crime Is To Stop Moral Decay”. Dartmouth College students gave a bemused reaction to his morals message, displaying signs such as “God Is Alive and Thinks He’s George Romney” and “Up With Dirty Minds, Down With Romney”.
« click for link to 1968 campaign
Without saying anything to his fellow students, Mitt Romney dropped out of Stanford in or after his first year and avoided the draft by enlisting himself as a Mormon missionary and traveled to France to deepen his faith.
