How I Learned to Recognize the Real Mitt Romney

But I spent years filming Romney and discerning between genuine moments and those that were too self-aware and conscious of the camera. And I feel certain that what we saw on the Senate floor this week was the real person: free of affectation, careful and studied, nervous but resolved, emotional, but slightly embarrassed of any role those emotions would play in inhibiting his ability to do his job.

Like with everyone else I’ve filmed, I certainly witnessed moments of inauthenticity while filming Romney: a nervous tic, a laugh at a joke that isn’t funny, being overly polite or formal. But I also noticed how frequently, and quickly, his facade melted around his family. He would get into an intense debate with his son over which airline terminal at JFK had the best food. I saw him get frustrated over someone ordering milk via room service rather than the much cheaper 7-Eleven across the street. I saw him get extremely animated in discussions about the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou.”

The most emotional I ever saw him get was during a family gathering at a golf course in Iowa. Many of his extended family (and Romney has a considerable extended family) had gathered to help canvass the state ahead of the 2008 Iowa caucuses. Over lunch, he stood to thank them for making the trip, when he suddenly stopped and struggled to maintain his composure. It took what seemed like a full minute to get out the phrase: “I promise … I won’t do anything … to … embarrass this family.”

I’ve seen Romney give more speeches than I can count. He can be eloquent and inspiring on stage, but that’s not what I saw in the Senate on Wednesday. The way he carefully turned the pages of his written remarks, sometimes repeating a word, presumably from the previous page—ensuring each word was being spoken accurately, even if that accuracy came at the expense of a more polished delivery—was an indication to me that he was concerned with something more important than simply coming across well. I know many people will take issue with how he voted or disagree with his reasoning—but accusations that he acted for any reasons other than those he gave simply don’t jibe with the honesty I witnessed.

I recently read a sequence from William Shakespeare’s Henry V. In Act 4, Scene 1, when a soldier asserts, “our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us,” a disguised King Henry quickly responds: “Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is his own.” After spending years filming Romney, and hundreds of additional hours examining that footage, it’s my opinion that his speech this week was a man simply telling the truth and preserving the integrity of his own soul.

Source: politico.com
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