When he’s done campaigning, Mitt Romney promises in the disarming and revealing documentary, “MITT,” “People will know me and know what I stand for — the flipping Mormon.”
Directed sympathetically by Greg Whiteley, who had access to the former Massachusetts governor and his family during both his failed 2008 quest for the Republican presidential nomination and his failed 2012 presidential campaign, the documentary takes us in the room on election night with Romney and his immaculately-scrubbed, Osmond-like family as they learn President Obama is being re-elected. Romney takes the news with equanimity but there is poignance in his features. “Does anyone have a number for the president?” he asks.
A good documentary uses judicious editing to make an important addition to your knowledge of a subject, and “Mitt” does so in a big way. We now know that Romney — and even his wife Ann — were plagued by doubts. Given that “public servants,” as they annoyingly call themselves, can be almost unbearably arrogant about their powers and the people’s love for them, Romney comes across as an un-politician. Reductionist sportscasters tell us that A won and B lost because A wanted it more. Romney, it now seems, wasn’t the guy who wanted it more.
Before his triumphant first debate with President Obama, Mrs. Romney is seen joking that “dirge music” should be played because Mitt was “walking to his execution.” Romney himself allows that he is “intimidated” by the president and even after his success in that showdown, which marked the high point of the campaign, he pooh-poohs his performance, saying that incumbent presidents always lose the first one. At one point he spoofs his own campaign fundraising speeches: “ ‘Let me tell ya, I’m gonna win this!’ Oh my gosh, I can’t fake it.”
Der Mittster comes across as funny and amiable, a sweet dork rather than the T-Rex of venture capital. He tries to iron his jacket cuffs without removing the coat, sleeps on the floor of an airplane and criticizes his own appearance. “Try not to break my hair,” he says his famously oaken coif while primping for a debate.
“Mitt” is a personal profile, not a campaign-strategy film, and there isn’t much here for political analysts to factor into their horse-race analysis. But the stiff who was born wearing a necktie and a starched shirt is transformed and redefined in just 90 minutes. Now we know that Romney is decent, relatable, honest and open, a good man deserving of lasting respect.