Metro

Mitt Romney didn’t want to be a presidential candidate in 2012, his son says

Mitt Romney never wanted to run for president in the first place, his son says.

“He wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my life. He had no desire to . . . run,” Tagg Romney told The Boston Globe in a story published yesterday.

Tagg said it was he and his mom, Ann, who persuaded Romney to make a run. for the Oval Office.

“If he could have found someone else to take his place . . . he would have been ecstatic to step aside,” Tagg said.

“He is a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them, but he has deep faith in God and he loves his country, but he doesn’t love the attention.”

The article also highlights the campaign’s internal battle over whether Romney should have opened up more of his private life to the public.

Those who urged focusing on President Obama’s struggles with the economy and on Romney’s vision for the White House won out.

But the decision allowed the Obama campaign to negatively define Romney early on in a blistering series of television ads.

The former Massachusetts governor did no favor for himself by getting caught on video about a month before the election referring to 47 percent of Americans as “victims” hooked on government handouts.

Attempts to reach former campaign staffers for comment were unsuccessful.