Governor George Romney - 28 July 1995

'Who is going to be the next president of the United States?' was the surprising question put to me by all sorts of people on a recent trip to England, surprising because though in America people will argue endlessly about the comparative chances of this man and that, including that woman governor of New Jersey, most people faced by such a question would say, whoa Dobbin, 15 months yet to go.

Among the Republican candidates already panting for the presidency, there is no figure remotely as likely to win the nomination as Mr Tony Blair, say, is likely to be the next Prime Minister or as they write in American High School Yearbooks: most likely to succeed. Likely? Surely he's a certainty. Well I will say no more except that I have been burned so often by placing bets too early that I've come to believe with the Yankees immortal catcher Yogi Berra that the games not over till its over. The scars are still with me from one burning 45 years ago and maybe I'll tell you about it as a cautionary tale if we have time.

Today, and for the next few days perhaps weeks and months, the thing we'll all be watching with hope or dread or both, is the outcome of the Senate's decisive vote on Wednesday to do what its majority leader, and at the moment the Republican front runner for the presidency, to do what Senator Dole has been urging for a year or more: to lift the arms embargo on the Bosnian Muslim government, a move that instantly evoked from Mr Clinton's Secretary of State Mr Christopher: if Dole prevails the likelihood is that the Serbs will launch a massive attack. If Dole prevails? He has prevailed has he not? Well practically yes, but there's a technical hitch or two along the way.

This is the story. The House of Representatives voted to lift the embargo last month by the overwhelming vote of 318 to 99, but that bill included other legislation that had nothing to do with Bosnia and so the House is, as I speak about to vote again on the exclusively Arms Embargo Bill that passed the Senate and that can go into effect, we ought to notice, only after all the United Nations peacekeeping forces are withdrawn and that is likely to be a long and bloody business involving, the Pentagon calculates, 60,000 men.

Mr Clinton has committed himself - the Congress may not consent - to send 20,000 but it's the last thing he wants to do because he fears that the certainty of American ground troops will entail very large casualties. His policy incidentally remains what it's always been since he became president: to give Nato the power through the United Nations to perform more and heavier air strikes.

Now the other snag is this: the president can under the Constitution veto any bill that was passed by less than a two thirds majority. The Senates 69 to 29 is two votes over, but the president has said he still will veto the bill, which will then require another vote to override his veto another clear two thirds majority. And on that vote, he hopes to shake loose two or three of his own party who cross the aisle, then again the bill allows a 30 day delay in lifting the ban if the president sniffs, or can maintain that he smells, a threat to national security.

However, none of these snags and hitches are expected to put off for more than a month or two the day when arms may flow freely to the Bosnian Muslims after the Bosnian Serbs have surely retaliated, after the United States has sent in countless troops to cover the withdrawal of the entire United Nations peacekeeping force. Finally, to add a truly ominous touch, a member of President Yeltsin's Presidential Council declared on Wednesday that if the United States does lift the embargo, Russia will have to think of doing the same for the Serbs. I don't know the appropriate quotation with which to entitle this developing tragedy: "Mischief, thou art afoot," or unleash "the dogs of war".

An old American died the other day long forgotten, perhaps never known to you at all, but famous enough at one time to be his party's leading contender for the presidency and he incidentally illustrates a condition of running for the presidency, that is not only not clear in the constitution but could produce a storm of controversy if it was ever tested. The man who has just died was George Romney, 30 years ago Governor of Michigan who in 1968, in a national poll outran Ronald Reagan, Nelson Rockefeller and heavens knows, Richard Nixon who by then was thought to have gone permanently into oblivion.

In the spring, the poll gave George Romney 54 per cent of the popular vote and Lyndon Johnson 46 per cent so Romney the governor of Michigan – at a time when it was the world capital of motorcar manufacture – was a clean-cut handsome bulldog type with silvery grey hair brushed back in a manner of the 1920s. He had several things going against him for president, at least several things thought at the time to be disabilities. He was a Mormon and a true believer: no smoking, no drinking and like Mormons for at least two previous generations, the saving grace of having only one wife. Lots of voters thought that having a Mormon president would be, well, uncomfortable, but there was an even more serious snag, he'd been born in Mexico, his mother happened to be there at the time. Now his opponents in both parties were quick to bring this up against him unchivalrously but without much enthusiasm. The Constitution says no person except a natural born citizen shall be eligible to the Office of President, what is a natural born citizen? It's never been decided or agreed on, but it has generally been taken for granted that being born outside the United States disqualifies you from being thought natural born. However George Romney did not last long enough as a probable presidential candidate to have that pungent but vague phrase tested. He took himself out of the race one morning with one sentence. 1968, he went, as an aspiring presidential candidate had better do, to Vietnam, to look things over. He came back, he was invited to the White House for a chat with President Johnson who was willing to hear anyone's views on Vietnam.

When the governor came out of the White House, he was stopped by a mere handful of reporters and asked how things had gone with the president, he said, "I've just had a brainwashing." Much later this was wrongly taken to express his emotions after visiting Vietnam. At the time, he was talking about the treatment he'd just had from President Johnson. I can sympathise deeply. I had it myself three years earlier when summoned to the White House to explain why I had, in Mr Johnson's words, been writing bad about Vietnam. He spent over three hours talking and explaining Vietnam. And he knew everything, he really did so that I didn't write bad about Vietnam for another three weeks, I had been brainwashed.

Well Governor Romney had no sooner voiced the word than his presidential hopes were doomed, that single word was flashed around the country. Well, I mean, you can't have a brainwashed man for president can you? I'm sure most of you can remember similar simple phrases, which either put a candidate over the top or tripped him up, but as for whose going to be president, I always think back to 1940. For the Republican nomination then, there were only two possible serious contenders: the famous great conservative Senator from Ohio Senator Robert Taft and his rival, the gang busting prosecutor, very able governor of New York Thomas Edmund Dewey. At the convention, the two mighty forces of Tuft and Dewey squared off in battle array, and well the balloting came, they thought and clashed through four ballots. On the fifth ballot, the winner was declared: Wendell L Wilkie. Who?

In the late spring a Mr Wilkie, a Wall Street unknown utilities lawyer, a shambling bear of a man with a warm guttural voice, had appeared on a radio quiz show, and made a generally agreeable appearance, or rather – no television then – performance, much admired in the press. A bunch of idealistic young Republicans thought he might be just the man for president. Ridiculous. They started Wilkie chapters in several states, their campaign was never a whirlwind, just an agreeable fresh breeze, which however, sifting through a blazing mid-summer convention was suddenly very welcome somehow. Wilkie was the man. He fought a good if losing fight against Roosevelt, blithely breaking George Washington's rule never to run more than twice. Roosevelt was running for a third term and would again for a fourth. So Romney lost the nomination by a single word, Wilkie won it by a single radio appearance when he was a total unknown. Please don't ask me whose going to be president until the first Tuesday in November next year.

THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING OF THE ORIGINAL BBC BROADCAST (© BBC) AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.

Letter from America audio recordings of broadcasts ©BBC

Letter from America scripts © Cooke Americas, RLLP. All rights reserved.