From a direct mail fundraising letter from Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts who is running for president. The letter is dated September 9, 2011: "My father never graduated from college. He apprenticed as a lath and plaster carpenter. Dad always believed in America; and that in America, a lath and plaster man could work his way up to running a car company called American Motors and end up a three-term Governor."
It's one of those things about America that even Mr. Romney, the wealthy former private equity executive who is the son of a car company CEO who served three terms as governor of Michigan, feels the need to tell voters about his blue-collar, non-college-graduate family background. Whether one thinks this comes off as phony or as endearing probably depends on what one thinks of Mr. Romney.
One additional point related to George Romney (1907-1995). I just finished reading Jacqueline Kennedy's newly released oral history interviews, and one of the annotations by historian Michael Beschloss references an oral history interview by Robert Kennedy in which RFK recalled that George Romney was the Republican presidential opponent that John F. Kennedy "feared the most. ... He thought he had this appeal to ... God and country..... He spoke well, looked well."
