Romney: The man behind the perma-smile

New York: "Well, it's just great to be here!" Mitt Romney says as he bounds on to the stage at a campaign stop in January, just one of hundreds he has made in his epic journey he hopes to the White House. It is the first of three rallies he will be packing into a single day, this one held at a small liberal arts college in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

"This is gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous," he continues, a perma-grin glued to his face. He has a way of talking down to the crowd, pausing after every sentence to allow them to soak it up, that is disconcertingly suggestive of that old pantomime favourite, Widow Twankey. "What kind of tree is that?" he says, looking up at the branches that arch over him with an expression of mock surprise. "I don't even know. Isita Mitt Romney tree?"

The crowd laughs heartily, which is peculiar given the quality of the "joke" and the fact that, unlike a pantomime, there are few three-year-olds in the audience. (Besides, as any motley fool could tell you, the tree under which he is speaking is a laurel oak, Quercus hemisphaerica.)

It has been a rum old fortnight for the former governor of Massachusetts. Since 2007, he has been on the campaign trail virtually without pause, laying down a nationwide network of volunteers, fundraisers and supporters that his rivals Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul can only dream of.

Voter distrust

In the tradition of American politics, where money and political influence do the talking, the Republican nomination rightfully belongs to him. Yet it is proving heavy going. Core Republican voters continue to distrust him, turning restlessly to a succession of alternatives. They have toyed with Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, the current bearer of the Not-Mitt-Romney mantle.

Romney remains the putative frontrunner. Most pundits believe he will weather the storm - Hurricane Newt, you might call it - and go on to face Barack Obama in the presidential election on November 6. But after all the battering he has taken, you have to wonder. Why do his own people seem to dislike him so much? And who is this man who could become leader of the most powerful nation on earth, anyway?

Romney's campaigning style is not as dire as it was four years ago, when he had all the panache of a donkey.

Criticism of Romney

This time round, his stump speech is still scripted to death, to the extent that once you have heard him deliver it a few times, you can mouth along to it like a pop song. But he is loosened up, discarding tie and suit for jeans and gingham and with his wife, Ann, on his arm. Nonetheless, a nagging disconnect remains. As a Boston business acquaintance puts it in Ronald Scott's biography of Romney: "There's no heart, like the Tin Man."

Even those who know Romney well, such as Bob Bennett, US senator for Utah until last year, agree he can come across as rather detached. Bennett says that Romney's true passion is for problem solving and number crunching, skills he picked up at Harvard Business School and developed as a management consultant at Bain Co.

"Mitt loves to wallow in the data," Bennett says. "His first instinct is to say: ‘Show me the data, let's work out the problem.' It's an accountant's mentality, he doesn't have the habit of raising his head and giving a smile to a passer-by."

— Guardian News & Media Ltd