Is Mitt grooming for a higher office?

For a man who says he doesn't have his eye on the White House, former Utah Olympic leader Mitt Romney is sure looking like a future presidential candidate these days.

Romney will address the Republican National Convention this week in prime time, reportedly just before Vice President Dick Cheney speaks Wednesday to the delegates gathered in New York City.

Romney is already serving as a surrogate in President Bush's reelection campaign. Beginning Monday, he'll play a prominent role in the president's preconvention national tour alongside U.S. Sen. John McCain and other GOP leaders.

Add those events to the Massachusetts governor's high-profile stance against gay marriage and a multistate tour promoting his new book, "Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership and the Olympic Games" and Romney is clearly raising his national profile.

But is he positioning himself for a run at the presidency?

"I'm working on being a good governor," Romney said in a recent interview with the Deseret Morning News. "I've got a tough job ahead of me, a lot of things I'd like to do as governor. . . . We'll see what the future holds, and hopefully it holds another term as governor."

He won't be up for reelection until 2006 — two years before the next presidential election.

Utahns will remember that Romney kept his political ambitions to himself during the more than three years he spent here as head of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. His plans weren't revealed until after he left for Massachusetts shortly after the 2002 Winter Games.

Much as he is doing now, Romney stayed mum for months as he monitored the Massachusetts governor's race. He didn't declare his candidacy until he appeared to be the only Republican ready to run in the largely Democratic state.

Call it the "White Knight" approach.

That's the title bestowed on Romney when he was recruited to save the Salt Lake Games from the bid scandal. Then a Boston businessman, Romney waited quietly in the wings until Utah officials were ready to announce his appointment.

It's a pattern that Romney is likely to repeat as he considers running for president.

Longtime friend Fraser Bullock, who served under Romney as SLOC's chief operating officer and, before that, with him at a Boston venture capital firm, said the pair have talked about the possibility.

"I've told him I think it would be a good idea if he ran at some point, because I know first-hand how capable he is," Bullock said. "What he said to me is he was focused on the work at hand, whatever it was, the Olympics or being governor of Massachusetts."