Romney returns

WASHINGTON, DC: When a man wishes to run for president, he no longer announces the fact to voters, or chooses an issue on which to take a stand. Instead, he lets a group of donors know that he is “exploring” the possibility of a bid, as if the campaign trail were some inaccessible region inhabited by polar bears.

For Mitt Romney, who told donors on January 9th that he might run again, after months of scoffing at the idea, it is hardly unfamiliar terrain. Should he give it a go, 2016 would see the third Romney presidential campaign (not counting his father’s).

Why Mr Romney—a decent man who in 2012 was pounded by adverts painting him as a heartless capitalist and careless pet owner, then denounced as useless by fellow Republicans when he lost—should want to make another attempt on the presidency is a puzzle. Perhaps the best explanation was given by another explorer: because it is there. In very early polling, Mr Romney tops a list of possible Republican candidates so long that it is sometimes quicker to mention who is not running. The likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, currently looks a formidable opponent for any of them, but she has hardly been tested yet and, if she runs, will get little campaigning practice in her party’s primary.

Also in Mr Romney’s favour is his surname. He would begin any campaign with the sort of recognition that costs many millions of dollars. More important, his name is not Bush, which polling suggests is not a popular one among independent voters. Republicans last won the White House without a Bush on the ticket in 1972. But if feelings were to harden against Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and a fellow 2016 explorer, it would create some space on the business wing of the party, which thought it had found a winner until Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, got into a kerfuffle over a bridge and saw his state’s bonds downgraded.

Were that gap to open, one of Mr Romney’s immediate tasks would be to write a campaign book. Even for a life as lively as his, a third autobiography may seem like overkill. Though he is a self-described turnaround specialist, a Romney presidency seems unlikely. But that’s what they said about Ronald Reagan, whose first two bids also failed.