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Back in business: Mitt Romney says he is better equipped to revive the economy

An extraordinary political earthquake struck America this week. Mitt Romney, widely assumed to be the ‘best of a weak bunch’ of Republican candidates, suddenly overtook Barack Obama in election polls.

Remarkably for someone with a reputation as Mr Dullard, it was his brilliant performance on October 3 at the first of three presidential debates, where he scored the biggest win ever over an oddly downcast Obama, that propelled him into the favourite’s chair.

Should Romney now win on November 6, America will not only have replaced its first black President with its first Mormon President.



It will also have elected the squeakiest-clean man ever to run for the presidency in any country in the world.

Imagine for a moment an interview with a British politician that went as follows:

Q: Have you ever drunk alcohol?

A: No.

Q: Have you ever taken drugs?

A: No.

Q: Have you ever had an affair?

A: No.

Q: Have you ever smoked a cigarette?

A: No.

Q: Do you ever use swear words?

A: No.

Now imagine that politician was actually telling the truth. Short of Ann Widdecombe, I can’t think of a single MP in our illustrious nation’s history who would be able to answer ‘no’ to more than half these questions.

I’m fairly sure Boris Johnson, the man who might well be our Prime Minister one day, would rack up a resounding 100 per cent ‘yes’ rate.

But when I interviewed Romney for my CNN show, he proudly answered all those questions to me in the firm negative. He is a devout Mormon and takes his faith so seriously that he donates at least ten per cent of his income to the church every year – totalling tens of millions of dollars over the past two decades.

The reason he can give away so much money is that he was a fantastically successful businessman, estimated to have made a $250 million fortune from his time running Bain, a venture-capital firm.

In person, he’s charming, polite, friendly and solicitous. He’s also a great father and grandfather, according to his devoted sons, and a great husband, according to Ann, the woman who was his teenage sweetheart and who he’s helped nurse with deep compassion through her ongoing battle with multiple sclerosis.

He’s also one of the least principled politicians I’ve ever encountered. There’s barely a big issue that Romney hasn’t switched his position on for apparent political expediency, earning him the nickname ‘Mr Flip Flop’.



Should he win: America will have replaced its first black President with its first Mormon President

In fact, it’s hard to even recognise the new Mitt from the one who was a successful and popular Governor of Massachusetts.

On abortion, he was once firmly pro-choice, now he’s equally firmly pro-life. On guns, he outlawed lethal assault weapons. Now he says they’re fine, despite a rash of horrific recent mass gun killings.



On healthcare, he was the first governor to bring in a compulsory ‘mandate’ health insurance scheme. But when Obama did the same thing, he lambasted it as a terrible idea.

He was also a huge fan of stem-cell research, but now he says he’s been ‘persuaded that the stem-cell debate was grounded in a false premise’.

Each move was dictated by the need to make him more electable – not to the wider public, but to his own party members, particularly the more Right-wing Tea Party element, so he could win the Republican nomination during the Primary race – and it worked.



'America will have elected the squeakiest-clean man ever to run for the presidency in any country in the world'

But now he’s approaching the actual general election, he’s started moderating his positions once again. To widespread mockery, he said this week he wouldn’t seek any anti-abortion legislation if he became President, a direct contradiction of what he said at the start of the year. ‘Here’s old moderate Mitt!’ chortled former President Bill Clinton. ‘Where you been boy? . . . Just show up with a sunny face and say, “I didn’t say all that stuff I said for the last few years.” ’

But how much does Romney’s flip-flopping actually matter to the result of the election? The main concern for Americans right now is the economy, after all. I asked Bill Clinton recently if he felt Romney was a ‘principled man’ and Clinton smiled: ‘That’s not the issue to me.’

And I suspect it’s not for most voters either. They just want to know which man, Romney or Obama, is going to revive the economy faster.

Obama is not a hated figure among most Americans by any means, which is why he may still scrape home. But there’s definitely a distinct disillusionment about his performance, even among many of his diehard supporters.

The great messianic tidal wave of optimism Obama swept in on has been replaced by harsh reality.

He promised Americans tremendous ‘hope’ and ‘change’ and, frankly, they don’t feel he’s given them much hope, or changed very much.



Optimism gone: The messianic tidal wave of optimism Obama swept in on has been replaced by harsh reality

Obama does deserve plaudits for improving the reputation of America abroad after the war-ridden years of George W. Bush, not least by ending the war in Iraq and recently announcing the end of troop deployment in Afghanistan, for saving the US car industry with a successful federal bailout, for bringing 30 million more Americans into healthcare insurance, for killing Osama Bin Laden, and for pushing down the barriers of homophobia by publicly supporting gay marriage.

But – and it’s a big but – unemployment is still running at a scarily high 7.8 per cent, meaning 23 million Americans are out of work. Meanwhile, the country’s national debt has risen to a staggering $16 TRILLION, up $5 trillion from when Obama took over. Factor in a still severely deflated housing market, and petrol prices double what they were in 2008, and it all adds up to a pretty miserable economic picture.

'Forget the flip-flopping... the economy is the big issue and he's a fantastic businessman'

That’s where Romney can win. His track record as a businessman is better than almost any presidential candidate ever. He also almost single-handedly turned round the fortunes of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002, after the organising committee turned to him desperate for help.



He sees America as a struggling company, and himself as therefore the perfect person to rescue it.

I interviewed Romney most recently in London on the day of his ill-fated remarks about the preparations for our own Olympics. He arrived looking stunned by the reaction. ‘I thought I was only saying what all you guys were saying?’ he said.

‘Ah yes,’ I replied, ‘but it’s a bit like going to someone’s house and saying you don’t like their curtains . . . even if they don’t like them either, it’s not down to you to say it.’ He laughed. ‘I need a Big Mac, fast.’ After that, like the good chameleon that he is, Romney said all the right things.

One senior Republican figure, a man widely tipped to run for President at a later date, told me during the party’s convention in August: ‘Mitt’s not the kind of guy you’d go for a beer with, mainly because he doesn’t drink beer. But he’s the kind of guy who gets stuff done.’

Of course, it’s not over yet. There are two more crucial debates, starting with one this Tuesday. But if Romney were to win those too, he’d be well on the way to the White House.

There was great excitement around the world when America elected its first black President in 2008. The possible election of America’s first Mormon President will bring with it far lower expectations. But that may not be such a bad thing, for him, for America, or for the world. Especially if he actually gets stuff done.