Searching for a soul.

"The more Mitt Romney has immersed himself in politics, the more vigorously he has peddled the narrative—what Newt Gingrich has termed "pious baloney"—that politics was just something that the life-long businessman stumbled into, more or less in the manner of a fellow who strolls into his local diner for a cup of coffee in the middle of a stickup and is thereupon transformed, albeit reluctantly, into a civic hero. Romney's selective elucidation of his own biography seems of a piece with his fuzzy ideology. As one of his former senior advisers admits, "Mitt's flaw is authenticity. Someone who changes his mind can be effective as a business leader or running the Olympics. But when you change your mind on such core issues as abortion, then what? Where's the authenticity?"

Romney's story line has undergone a few crucial revisions. As recently as February, he told supporters in Nevada, "I never imagined I would one day run for president of the United States," but back in December 2007 he had a different recollection when I asked him when he first thought about taking up residency in the White House. "It was probably, oh, back when I was with Senator [Bob] Bennett of Utah after the Olympics, when I was governor a couple of years, around 2004," he replied. "He just said to me, 'Y'know, you don't have to decide if you want to be president. But you do have to decide if you want the option to become president.' [In a recent interview, Bennett clarified to me that he first put this in memo form.] And it's like, 'Wow. I'm a one-term governor from Massachusetts. You think I've got that kind of opportunity?'

But of course," Romney went on, "you know, did it pop into my mind at other times in my life? Of course. But not as a 'Hey, I've really got a shot at doing this,' but more 'This is a serious course for me.' "

So why did the boy who dreamed of designing cars or practicing medicine instead become the single most driven presidential aspirant of the twenty-first century? Mitt Romney's wife, Ann, gave away the answer to a reporter in 1999, a few years before anyone fully appreciated what it meant. "Politics," she explained, "is in Mitt's blood." Or as Mitt himself would write, "I had become my father's son."

I just posted parts of an article from GQ Magazine that focused on Mr. Romney. I am trying to learn as much as I can about him because my wingnut friends have convinced me that he could be my next president. Unfortunately I don't like what I have been seeing so far.

I don't mind that fact that he has never taken a drink. I don't mind his Ward Cleaver persona, or the way he talks down to everybody like we all work for him. What I do mind is that fact that he has no core or soul. I just can't get over the fact that there is not one authentic bone in the man's body. His unctuous used- car salesman style deliveries this campaign season have been hard to watch. And yes, for the most part, we expect politicians to be inauthentic. But even though we understand that most politicians are usually insincere, there is just so much speciousness a person can take.

"Mitt reacted to his double-digit defeat with the conviction that politics wasn't for him. "Under no circumstances" would he run again, he declared. Just two weeks later, however, he told a reporter that he might challenge the other Massachusetts senator, John Kerry, in 1996. "Today I say I will leave the door open," he said."

They don't call him Flipper for nothing.