BLOOMFIELD HILLS doesn’t look like much of the rest of Detroit. It has mock-Tudor homes with decorated post boxes that feature scaled-down replicas of the mansions at the end of the driveways.
Along the gently curving streets and flourishing Serbian spruce, Norwegian maples and red oaks cast a sun-dappled shade across much of the neighbourhood.
There are no pavements or bus stops and there is no town centre. The local commerce includes a dog-grooming salon, an upmarket wine shop and a gated country club. And it was here that Willard Mitt Romney, born on March 12th, 1947, grew up as the son of a top-ranking car executive and popular governor.
He spent his formative years here in this affluent suburb, about half an hour’s drive north of Detroit, a city devastated by the decline in the car and steel industry. So, what does the hometown of the Republican candidate tell us about the man who would be president?
Bloomfield Hills ranks as one of the top-five wealthiest cities in the US. It’s overwhelmingly white and populated by senior executives, lawyers and highly paid figures in the world of medicine and sport.
“Many have chosen to live and remain in Bloomfield Hills for the quiet, wooded lots, privacy and stately homes,” the city council boasts, in its brochures.
It all fits neatly with the caricature of the Republican candidate secretly recorded in recent months telling wealthy donors that 47 per cent of Americans were “dependent on government” and see themselves as victims.
But can a man who has grown up surrounded by such affluence ever be in a position to understand what it means to struggle to make ends meet? At the pristine house with manicured gardens and burbling fountain where Mr Romney grew up, the current owner insists the image of the candidate as an uncaring vulture capitalist is unfair.
“He became a wealthy guy because of the structures in America. It doesn’t make it bad to be successful in life,” says Mada Mallebay-Vacquer, who bought the house from the Romneys after Mitt’s father, George, died, in the mid-1990s.
She shows off the interior of the spacious house with its tasteful, muted colours and stone floors. She points out that the house was a more modest affair before, without the landscaped gardens and water features.
“His opponents say he was born rich. But he came from a middle-class family that was successful. And he was even more successful. Really, to me, it shows the fact you can do anything you want in America. It’s not a bad thing to be rich.”
They’re sentiments widely held here. While Michigan is a Democrat state, this is a solidly Republican enclave. Down at the Deli cafe, based in the local Radisson Hotel, local residents Patricia Hardy and Sandi Pape, are having breakfast and discussing the previous night’s final television debate.
How do they feel about Romney’s ability to empathise with the less well-off? “As for the 47 per cent remark. Well, when you don’t know you’re being recorded and speaking to like-minded supporters, you may say things offhandedly which you wouldn’t mean to,” says Pape, who knows several members of the Romney family.
“I think he does care. He is committed and a genuine, humanitarian. You don’t have to be a Democrat to care about people.” But her neighbour disagrees. She feels the “47 per cent” remark was a revealing insight into his character.
“I do think that his world is coloured because he came from such a privileged environment and had private schooling. I came from a background that was nothing like that,” says Hardy.
Cranbrook, where Romney was educated and met his wife Ann, is a leafy, private campus that provides education from pre-kindergarten right through to college preparatory schools. The teachers, though, are tight-lipped when it comes to revealing what kind of student he was.
“It would certainly be a sense of enormous pride to have one of our alumni elected to the highest office in the land,” a spokesman for the school says, soberly.
“However, as a matter of policy, Cranbrook Schools does not and will not endorse any political ideology, party or candidate.” His yearbook, though, gives an insight into an earnest and engaged (and potentially annoying) student who was involved in all aspects of school life.
It says his activities included “cross country, hockey manager, church cabinet, the forum, world affairs seminar, homecoming committee chair, assistant editor of the yearbook . . .” and so on.
Politics, clearly, was in the blood. His father was elected governor three times, in 1962, 1964 and 1966. Mitt’s time would come much later, and in another state. But during his father’s campaign for governor, 15-year-old Mitt reportedly made his first and – and not last – political gaffe.
He told a reporter that it “sure felt funny to be in the United States on the fourth of July”: the family traditionally spent its summers at their holiday home in Ontario, Canada.
His father’s career also suffered from foot-in-mouth syndrome. His bid for the presidency in 1968 blew up when he told a television interviewer that he was opposed to the Vietnam War.
“I just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get when you go over to Vietnam. Not just by the generals, but by the diplomatic corps.”
The sentiments may have been genuine – but the choice of words scuppered his campaign. It’s something his son will be doubtless aware of during these final two weeks of the campaign. His neighbours feel he has often been misrepresented in the past – but now the real Mitt is getting across.
“We know his character and I think he’d like to get to the White House in a way that would make his old man proud,” says one older resident, who declines to be named. “And it’ll make a lot us proud around here too.”
