Romney Makes Appeal to Undecided Voters

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — With just 72 hours before the polls open here, Mitt Romney kicked off his busiest day of the general election so far, racing through four events in three states as he made his final appeal to voters.
His message: A Romney administration offers the reality of the hope, change and across-the-aisle bipartisanship that President Obama promised four years ago and then failed to deliver.

“I’ve watched over the last few months as our campaign has gone from a start to a movement,” Mr. Romney said. “It’s not just the size of the crowds. It’s the conviction and compassion in the hearts of the people.”

The lessons he picked up as governor of Massachusetts, working with a largely Democratic legislature, he added, would serve him well in the White House.
“I learned that respect and good will goes a long way, and it’s likely to be reciprocated,” he said. “That’s how I would conduct myself as president. I won’t just represent one party. I will represent one nation.”

Mr. Romney also made an explicit appeal to undecided voters, urging his supporters to “spend some time in the next three days to see neighbors and maybe ones with an Obama sign in front of their home and just go by and say, ‘Look, let’s talk this through a bit.’”

“Because you see, President Obama came into office with so many promises and he’s fallen so fall short,” Mr. Romney said. “And just remind them of some of the things that they may have forgotten. He said he was going to be the post-partisan president, but he’s been the most partisan, dividing and demonizing.”

Mr. Romney was joined on his campaign plane by nearly his entire top team, a close-knit coterie of senior advisers, many of whom have been with him since his days in the Massachusetts Statehouse. Their mood was both upbeat and nostalgic.

Boarding the plane in New Hampshire to head onto Iowa, they posed for a quick group picture on the tarmac — a photo that, depending on the outcome of Election Day, could be either a glimpse into a future White House, or a keepsake for old friends of a campaign that didn’t quite go their way.

Mr. Romney’s wife, Ann, made a brief trip back to the press cabin to pass out pumpkin whoopee pies. Though she remained determinedly on-message and positive, talking about the people who are “really, really hurting,” her face and demeanor belied a weariness. (Mrs. Romney, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, was seen limping off the campaign plane Friday night, though aides said it was not a flare-up like the one she had during the primaries and that she was merely “exhausted.”)

“Three more days,” she said, echoing what has become a refrain on the campaign trail, as voters chant how many more days are left until, they hope, Mr. Romney becomes the president-elect. “It’s been long. It’s been a long road.”

On the stump, Mr. Romney offered a series of aggressive lines against Mr. Obama, criticizing the president for remarks he made in Ohio on Friday when he told his supporters that “voting is the best revenge.”

“Vote for revenge?” Mr. Romney asked, rhetorically. “Let me tell you what I’d like to tell you: Vote for love of country.”

Referring to the three presidential debates, largely credited with helping him pull closer to Mr. Obama in the polls, Mr. Romney presented what he said was a stark contrast between himself and the president.


“He says it has to be this way. I say it can’t stay this way,” Mr. Romney said. “He’s offering excuses. I’m offering a plan. I can’t wait to get started. He wants to convince you to settle. But Americans don’t settle. We dream, we aspire, we reach for greater things.”


He ended his speech, as he has been doing recently, with another call to unity.


“Come walk with me,” Mr. Romney urged. “Walk together to a better place. We’ve got to take back this country.”

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While Romney didn't serve in military, many Mormons do

WASHINGTON/SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) - While neither of the candidates in next week's U.S. presidential election was in the military, Mitt Romney's age - he was eligible to serve in Vietnam - has raised questions during the campaign about why he didn't serve and whether his Mormon faith had anything to do with it.

Guy Hicks, a Mormon and former officer in the Army Reserve Special Forces, said there is a public misperception that members of the Mormon Church do not serve in the military.

"There is a sense in our culture and in our religious belief that we have an obligation to serve our country, and that's found in military service; it's also found in public service," said Hicks, a senior vice president at aerospace and defense firm EADS North America.

The participation of Mormons in the armed forces is roughly equivalent to their proportion of the population; senior figures in the Church served during World War II; and at least 10 Mormons have won the Medal of Honor.

According to Pentagon records, nearly 18,200 military service members identified themselves as belonging to the Mormon Church as of March, about 1.3 percent of the nearly 1.4 million active-duty personnel. Around 2 percent of the U.S. population identify as Mormons.

Romney was a 19-year-old student at Stanford University in the spring of 1966 when opponents of the military draft occupied a campus building. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the formal name of the Mormon Church) was a strong supporter of the Vietnam War, and the clean-cut young Romney protested against the protesters. Photographs show him carrying a placard saying: "Speak Out, Don't Sit In."

Rather than joining the armed forces, however, Romney later that summer chose another path. He obtained a deferment allowing him to avoid military service and traveled to France to work as a missionary for his Church, a traditional form of service for young Mormons. Romney's five sons all followed in his footsteps, serving as missionaries but not soldiers.

Military service used to be a crucial element of a presidential resume, adding gravitas to the person applying for the job of commander-in-chief. But in recent years it has become less of a requirement, and neither Obama nor Bill Clinton served.

In the last election, Barack Obama, who is 51, faced an opponent who was a Vietnam War hero, Senator John McCain, and his predecessor as president, George W. Bush, served in the Texas Air National Guard.

Mormon Church members say the decision to enter the military, government or some other form of service is a personal one. Those who do serve as missionaries are considered officials of the Church, which qualified them for a draft exemption.

"During the Korean conflict and Vietnam War, the Church voluntarily placed restrictions on the number of missionaries sent out from each ward. A bishop could recommend one young man every six months for missionary service," said Mormon Church spokesman Eric Hawkins. "Young men who had received induction notices or whose draft number was likely to be called were not recommended for missionary service."

Romney was prepared to serve in the military after his student deferments expired in the early 1970s, but he wasn't called, his campaign said. "His career choices did not take him into the military, but he has deep respect for all who have served," a spokesperson said.

BOYS TO MEN

Although Romney, 65, is not a veteran and is running against an incumbent whose administration tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden, he heads into Election Day on November 6 with strong support among the military and veterans.

Polling by Reuters/Ipsos during October found that active-duty military personnel and their families support Romney over President Obama by 49 percent to 43 percent. When military veterans and their families are included, Romney led the president 53 percent to 38 percent.

Romney's wife, Ann, told television interviewers recently that the decision by her husband and sons not to serve in the military was unrelated to their religious beliefs. Both Church missionary work and military service help young people to grow and mature, she said.

"My boys did all serve missions, and they went away for two years," she said on the television program 'The View.' "I sent them away boys and they came back men ... and I think this is where military service is so extraordinary, too, where ... you are working and helping others. And that changes you."

She noted, however, that those who serve in the military deserve particular respect for putting their lives on the line.

MILITARY HISTORY

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints boasts plenty of former servicemen.

Church President Thomas Monson joined the U.S. Navy as a teenager in the closing months of the Second World War. Boyd Packer, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a Church governing body, was a bomber pilot in the Pacific.

Other senior Mormon leaders also have served in the military, including retired four-star General Bruce Carlson, who was head of the Air Force Materiel Command before retiring in 2008. He now is a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy, another Church body.

The Mormon tradition of U.S. military service dates back to the Church's early history following its founding by Joseph Smith and other leaders in 1830.

When war broke out between the United States and Mexico in 1846, President James Polk asked Church leaders to raise a Mormon battalion of some 500 troops, agreeing in exchange to support the Mormons' move to the Salt Lake area. The Mormon battalion marched from Iowa to Southern California, where it performed occupation and border duties until it was disbanded in mid-1947. It never engaged Mexican forces in battle.

Relations between the Church and the U.S. government were tense in succeeding years. A Church-backed militia known as the Nauvoo Legion nearly came to blows with a U.S. military force sent to Utah Territory because of reports of a Mormon rebellion.

The Church abandoned controversial religious practices such as polygamy under pressure from the government in the latter part of the century, and Utah became a state in 1896. Since then, Mormons have consistently served in the military and fought in America's wars.

In modern times, Church leaders have touted the United States as "God's country" and believe that its existence fulfills a prophetic destiny, said Patrick Mason, an associate professor who holds a chair in Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University in California.

"Serving America is only half a step removed from serving God," he said. Mormon solders in Vietnam were basically told "you're doing God's work here strapping on your M-16 - just like Mitt Romney is doing God's work strapping on his Book of Mormon every day," Mason added.

Obama Banks on Bill Clinton to Clinch Close States

PALM BAY, Fla. (AP) — Republican Mitt Romney has millionaire backers, a huge staff and years of campaign experience, which may be enough to win the White House. President Barack Obama has one asset Romney can't match, however: Bill Clinton.

The former president is sprinting through battleground states, delivering more speeches than Obama himself and, arguably, carrying much of the president's re-election hopes on his 66-year-old shoulders.

There's nothing secret about this campaign weapon. If it's a competitive state, Clinton is there — and there and there — picking apart Romney's proposals in the folksy yet detailed style he unleashed at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C. Many party activists left there wondering why Obama can't make his own case as compellingly.

Friday was typical for Clinton. He made five stops in Florida, stretching from Palm Beach in the southeast to Fort Myers on the Gulf Coast to Tallahassee in the panhandle.

Romney had hoped to lock down the mega-swing state long ago. But he will return Monday because of its uncertainty.

Clinton, his raspy voice hoarser than usual, mixed nostalgia with lawyerly dissections when criticizing Romney's tax-cut plans in Palm Bay, the day's second stop, south of Cape Canaveral.

"I don't understand how people like me could sleep at night taking another tax cut, and taking it away from you," he said to cheers from several hundred people, who clearly did not resent his post-presidential wealth.

After shucking his suit jacket and loosening his orange tie under a brilliant midday sun, Clinton rattled off statistics about recent slowdowns in the growth of health care costs, and benefits of Obama's health law. "That is what Mr. Romney wants to repeal," he said.

"Bring it home, Bill" a woman shouted.

At every stop, Clinton praises Obama effusively, but he also reminds voters of his own days in office.

"I am the only living former president that ever gave you a budget surplus," he said in Palm Bay. Obama's policies, he adds, are much more in line with his than are Romney's.

Obama amplifies Clinton's boasts, knowing they give credence to the endorsements. In one Ohio stop Friday, Obama named Clinton four times.

"For eight years we had a president who shared our beliefs, and his name was Bill Clinton," Obama said. "His economic plan asked the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more so we could reduce our deficit and invest in the skills and ideas of our people." Romney opposed that plan, Obama said, and his math "was just as bad back then as it was today."

The white-haired Clinton looks drawn and tired at times, and he makes a few flubs. He apologized this week for saluting Pennsylvania when he happened to be in Ohio.

Clinton still runs late, even at morning events. Former Vice President Walter Mondale had to spin political yarns to kill time this week as voters waited in Minneapolis.

But the man who once headlined nine events in one day for his wife in the 2008 North Carolina primary — when Hillary Rodham Clinton was battling Obama — still feeds off crowds' energy and affection.

In Green Bay, Wis., Clinton gave a 57-minute dissertation on why the economy is better than many think. The only reason the Obama-Romney race is close, he said, "is because Americans are impatient on things not made before yesterday, and they don't understand why the economy is not totally hunky-dory again."

Clinton campaigned for Obama on Thursday in Wisconsin and Ohio. Earlier in the week he was in Iowa, Colorado, Minnesota and New Hampshire.

He will join Obama on Saturday for a rally in Virginia and on Sunday morning for an event in New Hampshire. Clinton also will campaign Sunday in North Carolina and Minnesota. And on Monday, the Obama camp hopes Clinton will snuff out any possible Romney eruption in Pennsylvania, scheduling stops for him in Pittsburgh and Scranton, plus two in Philadelphia.

No state underscores Clinton's value more than Florida, where the Republican Bush family looms large. While Obama makes every possible use of his party's most recent president, Romney can hardly mention George W. Bush, who left office amid an economic collapse and an unpopular war in Iraq.

Romney campaigned Thursday in Tampa, however, with Bush's brother Jeb, a former Florida governor who remains widely popular.

Much has been made of Clinton's once-frosty relationship with Obama. Clinton, among other things, in 2008 called Obama's history of opposing the Iraq war a "fairy tale."

The two men may never be chums. But Clinton's endorsements now seem full-throated. It delights Democratic loyalists.

"The Republicans have nothing to match the personal appeal and persuasive power of President Clinton," said Doug Hattaway, a consultant with close ties to the Clintons. "He can energize Democrats and close the deal with moderate swing voters."

Bruce Marvin, who attended Clinton's event in Chillicothe, Ohio, said the ex-president explains Obama's plans even more understandably than does the nominee.

"I think it's backing up what Obama may not have been able to get across," Marvin said.

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