Mitt was great; his book isn't

I always thought Mitt Romney was close to perfect as a manager, diplomat, organizer and all-around good guy as I watched him produce and execute Utah's Olympic Winter Games in 2002. From the day he came here from Boston in 1999 to the day he went back to Boston in 2002, I wrote so many positive things about him people suspected we were either related or I owed him money.

Which is why I wish I hadn't bothered to read his new book, "Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games."

I still think Mitt deserves all the praise he can get for a superb organizing job, much of which he details in his 384-page book. That part I enjoyed.

It's his revisionist history I have a problem with.

In "Turnaround," Mitt trots out the archaic view that when he came on the scene in January 1999, scandal had the Salt Lake Games hanging by a thread. To hear him describe it, our Olympics were about one sneeze away from being returned to the IOC in Lausanne.

As part of this history, he propagates the notion that ousted onetime bid leaders Tom Welch and Dave Johnson were the sum total of the bad guys who put things in such a deep, almost insurmountable hole, and theorizes that they should have been subsequently convicted of criminal activity — and would have been, if not for inept government prosecutors.

Mitt clearly is not real high on Welch and Johnson's "everybody-did-it" defense or on much of anything else before he arrived. He also clearly subscribes to the notion that "the victors write the history."

But his representations are problematic, especially for those of us who were here before he came and after he left.

Since Mitt didn't, I would respectfully submit the following for the record:

• The so-called Salt Lake Bid Scandal was almost entirely media-driven.

• The Salt Lake Olympics would have survived regardless.

• The ethics committees that looked into allegations of impropriety by Salt Lake's bidders never said Welch and Johnson were the only ethical violators.

• A lot of people whom Mitt praises in his book, including high Utah government and business leaders as well as his personal friends, were well aware of gifts, jobs and education scholarships for friends and relatives of IOC members.

• The IOC was involved far beyond the handful of third-tier members who were expelled. Many of its leaders participated intimately in Salt Lake's largesse, including then-President Juan Antonio Samaranch, who, in a kind of selected absolution, Mitt chooses to praise in print.

• And one other thing. As far as criminal behavior goes, in this country, it's innocent until proven guilty.

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