Mitt Romney 'would be willing to work for Barack Obama'
Mitt Romney 'would be willing to work for Barack Obama'
Mitt Romney would be willing to work in Barack Obama's administration despite being defeated in their battle for the presidency, according to one of his closest friends.
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/...a_2392028b.jpg Grant Bennett said that Romney could well be persuaded back into public service Photo: Michael Reynolds/AP
By Jon Swaine, Boston
8:22PM GMT 07 Nov 2012
29 Comments
The possibility of Mr Romney being offered a government job or task-force during a second Obama term was raised by the president in his victory speech on Tuesday night.
"I also look forward to sitting down with Governor Romney to talk about where we can work together to move this country forward," Mr Obama said.
Grant Bennett, who served alongside Mr Romney as a Mormon bishop in Massachusetts, said that his friend would never run for office again but could well be persuaded back into public service.
"If Mitt were invited by the president, he would say 'I'm an American. Can I contribute?," Mr Bennett told The Daily Telegraph. "Mitt's fundamental motivation is to make a difference for good".
Such a move would be likely to enrage Republican colleagues determined to block Mr Obama from implementing his plans. Alex Castellanos, a prominent Republican strategist, described Mr Obama's gesture to Mr Romney as "incredibly generous, but also incredibly smart politics".
Devastated by the failure of his six-year quest for the US presidency, Mr Romney is expected initially to retreat to his $12 million beach-side home in La Jolla, California, and to spend time with his five sons and 18 grandchildren.
But Mr Bennett said that at 65, the former Massachusetts governor "has enormous energy and is in great health" - and that after a break with his grandchildren, he would certainly not be retiring altogether.
However he said that Mr Romney, who has a $250 million (£160 million) fortune, was "not at this stage concerned about money", and could devote himself to charity work rather than the private sector.
Mr Romney's wife, Ann, brushed off suggestions that he had been tempted by lucrative jobs in finance after losing his first run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. "We're used to kind of passing offers up like that," Mrs Romney said of a $30-million-a-year role.
Yet a former senior aide to Mr Romney's father, George, struggled to identify a cause with which Mitt Romney might associate himself, especially after dismissing poorer voters as government-dependent "victims" in secretly-recorded remarks released during his campaign.
"George Romney always associated himself with the so-called '47 per cent'," Walt DeVries told The Daily Telegraph. "Mitt was born in the 53 per cent, and only left that group physically, financially and ideologically to move into the upper one or two per cent".
Having been defeated by Richard Nixon for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968, George Romney – who was Mitt's hero and mentor – served in Mr Nixon's cabinet as housing and urban development secretary.
Mr Bennett suggested that Mr Romney may return to a position in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, to which he has continued donating millions of dollars from his investment income.
"Mitt's high profile has provided a great opportunity for the Church to dispel lots of misconceptions about us Mormons," he said. "And I'm sure he could continue to do that".
Mr Romney rose to become a senior bishop in the Massachusetts Mormon church while working as a private equity executive at Bain Capital in the 1980s and 1990s.
Mitt Romney 'would be willing to work for Barack Obama' - Telegraph
