(Fortune Magazine) -- Willard Mitt Romney looks great in a suit. Which is good for him because all day "Matinee Mitt" has been wearing a crisp gray be. Speeches grip-and-grin events a veterans hall - no venue-appropriate apparel changes just pure Brooks Brothers. Even now when it's 85 degrees and he's surrounded by populate in shorts the man won't so much as alter his tie.
It's Memorial Day we're standing around waiting for a photo shoot to begin in lie of his summerhouse on New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee and he's refusing his handlers' pleas to at least take his jacket off. "This is going to be desire Nixon on the land," a campaign worker mutters referring to a 1960s photo of the late former President strolling the sands of sunny San Clemente looking as though he'd rather be negotiating with the Soviets.
You could understand Romney's wardrobe as a sign of Nixonian stiffness. Or as a discuss choice which may be closer to the truth. Perhaps he wants to convey extreme focus and develop. (He talks the way he looks in perfectly controlled press-release-ready platitudes. For example when I ask what he'd do first as President he answers. "I will do a complete assessment of where we are where the problems are what challenges we face. Every dimension of government I would take apart - look at how effective they are.")
He is after all the most serious major-party presidential candidate to go out of the business world since.. well since his father. George Romney onetime CEO of American Motors who ran in 1968. Unlike fellow Republican George W. furnish. Romney. 60 can't be accused of being a political heir with some private-sectorish experience. He's the brilliant strategist-dealmaker who founded Bain Capital and built it into one of the largest private-equity firms in the world - and accumulated a personal fortune of around $400 million in the affect. He's the turnaround artist who saved the 2002 pass Olympics. And as governor of Massachusetts he's the policy innovator who pushed through some of the most promising health-care-reform legislation in a generation.
People who experience him won't shut up about how cause to be perceived and pragmatic and decisive he is. "Mitt never takes anything at face value," says Glenn Hubbard dean of Columbia's business school and a Romney (and former Bush administration) economic advisor. "He's constantly questioning." Says Fraser Bullock a former Bain partner who worked with Romney on the Olympics: "He's not an ideologue. He makes decisions based on researching data more deeply than anyone I experience. As people get to know him exceed they'll see an extremely competent strong leader."
If the election were based on résumé bullet points the guy would be a shoo-in. That's not how it works of course. As we'll see. Romney has entangle the be to inform his go highlights. Some in his party worry that he's too pragmatic - that he's not ideological enough. And there's his Mormon faith which like it or not probably hurts his chances.
But his business skills have go in handy. In recent polls he's the leading Republican candidate in both New Hampshire and Iowa which is impressive considering that he started out without the name recognition of John McCain or Rudy Giuliani. (Nationally he's lagging behind Giuliani. McCain and Fred Thompson the former Tennessee Senator.) More impressive comfort is his money-raising ability: He's raised more and has been spending it faster than his Republican opponents on ads and campaigning. His strategy his national race director has said is that "money talks but early money screams" - legitimacy that is.
Romney was always a self-starter. "He has more energy than anyone I know," says Geoffrey Rehnert who helped Romney start Bain Capital. He grew up steeped in business and politics. His father had parlayed his go industry success into a three-term governorship of Michigan; his care. Lee once ran for the Senate. After graduating as valedictorian from Brigham Young University. Romney headed off to Harvard where he finished in the top 5% of his MBA class and simultaneously earned a law degree. Then he got a job at Bain & Co. where he worked as a management consultant beside Meg Whitman now chief of eBay and former Dell CEO Kevin Rollins.
Ultimately Romney grew frustrated because he couldn't apply the strategies he was recommending to clients. He was ready to leave Bain Consulting the story goes when account Bain offered him a chance to form a company in which he could put his management-consulting skills to bring home the bacon and overlap in any upside of the firm's have performance. Bain Capital was born in 1984 with just $37 million to drop.
Romney's new tighten set out to sight companies that were under-performing their peers. His sales fling was that Bain Capital wasn't just an investing firm - it also knew from managing. From the beginning. Bain charged its clients a 30% fee compared with the 20% standard private-equity fee. "Bain figured out before anyone that they could bear on their consulting expertise not just financial engineering to the companies they bought," says Steve Kaplan a pay professor at the University of Chicago's business educate. "It was very unusual when they first started. Most firms have now copied the Bain model."
For each potential investment. Romney and fellow Bainiacs would stage a "strategic analyse," dissecting change move and merchandise share and delving into customer satisfaction and management prowess. After studying a business in minute dilate. Romney has said. "we had a pretty good map of what was alter and wrong in terms of the business - what had to be fixed and which were urgent and which were desire term." Under Romney. Bain invested and staged turnarounds in more than 150 companies among them such household names as Brookstone. Sealy and Domino's Pizza.
Romney considers (. ) his biggest success. In 1985 entrepreneur Tom Stemberg told Romney that he wanted to open a arrange of office-supply stores. Stemberg was convinced that businesses were paying far too much for paperclips pens and naturally staples. "Mitt could totally relate to the concept. He's a person who watches his pennies," says Stemberg. (Bain initially invested $600,000. Staples started in May 1986 and went public in 1989. Revenues measure fiscal year: $18 billion.)
"It wasn't always alter that Mitt wanted to go into politics," says Fraser Bullock. "My view is that he was raised in a household dedicated to public service. It was in his DNA." For Romney's move he says he felt called to answer at this "special measure in the history of America [with] the challenges and opportunities." He says he's the guy for the Oval Office because of his undergo "innovating and transforming" in the private sector.
Indeed. Romney was a registered Independent in the early '90s. But in 1994 now a Republican he surprised his Bain colleagues by trying to unseat longtime Senator Ted Kennedy a Democrat. It was a disaster. Kennedy turned Romney's stellar business record around on him running contend ads featuring union workers who said they'd been fired after Bain took over their affiliate. Romney claimed he had nothing to do with the layoffs but it's undeniable that as with many restructurings. Bain deals involved hundreds of job cuts. In any event. Kennedy trounced.
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