I think at some level Fred did want the job. Perhaps he just looked at the tasks before him and weighed the risks and probabilities and decided it wasn’t going to happen. He’s a smart man. But he knew that he didn’t have the support of the big “early money” guys and the “prestige” advisers he would need. Maybe he didn’t want to put his wife through the kind of crap that less thoughtful people with bigger egos don’t care about. And I do believe that he was sabotaged, because I’ve worked on campaigns, and I’ve seen it up close and ugly.
This does not go very well with the theory that Fred was only running because his ambitious wife MADE him do it.
I think he definitely was sabotaged and I think he had an idea that if he was going to do this, he was going to do it ‘his way’ and either we’d go with him or we wouldn’t. I think he was doomed no matter what he did, because there were too many knives out for him on our own side. The Fox News people were brutal to him.
It’s all water under the bridge now. But I detest the Romney people to this day.