Once more, Willard Mitt Romney looked great, and not just because of his rugged jawline, which showed no sign of slackening, or his thick blow-dry, which had gone more gray in just the right places. No, there was something else, a feeling in the air as he moved through his adoptive state — where else? New Hampshire — which so harshly rebuked him in the 2008 Republican primary by choosing John McCain.
It was four days before the 2010 midterm elections, and Romney was making the Granite State rounds. People applauded him for just walking into a room. At the neocolonial estate of one wealthy contributor, the former Massachusetts governor glided from handshake to handshake, delighted to see so many he called “old friends,” while the new ones lined up to snap pictures. “This is New Hampshire,” Romney remarked in the childlike way of a candidate at work, who often must say something and nothing at the same time. “This is just an extraordinary place.”
