Mitt developed a passion for his father's business and sat alongside George Romney as he pored over auto trade publications. The son absorbed the smallest details of the auto industry, down to the minutiae of each car's design.

"I used to brag that you could show me one square foot and I could pick out the model and the year of the car," he said.

Although they lived a privileged life in the Detroit suburbs, Romney's parents sought to instill working-class values by making sure the kids pitched in with chores. That included shoveling before dawn during snowstorms.

Democrats dominated Michigan in the 1960s, no surprise given the strong auto industry and its union workers. What was a surprise was George Romney's success in being elected governor in 1962 as a Republican.

Like the auto business, Mitt Romney learned politics at the kitchen table. Father invited son to strategy sessions, giving him a front row seat on the campaign.

"I saw how he solicited views from other people, how he built a team of great individuals, how he made decisions based on data and analysis and solid thinking and not just gut feeling or opinion," Romney said.

The son would later serve as driver and advance man when Lenore Romney ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 1970 on a Republican platform notable for its embrace of abortion rights.

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Romney's most formative political experience came during the 1968 presidential campaign.

George Romney was an early favorite after launching his campaign from the family's summer home on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. Then, during an interview shortly after he visited Vietnam, he expressed frustration with the increasingly unpopular war and with the generals he felt were misleading the public.

"I'd just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get," George Romney told a television reporter.

"Brainwashing" became "brainwashed" in some accounts, and before Romney knew it, a throwaway line had blossomed into questions about his mental health. He quit the campaign a few weeks before the New Hampshire primary.

Back at his typewriter, George Romney put the loss in perspective for his son.

"Your mother and I are not personally distressed," he wrote. "As a matter of fact we are relieved."

The reversal of fortune was bitter for Mitt Romney and would grate on him for the next four decades.

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One day as a Cub Scout, young Mitt and some friends spotted a young girl across a set of railroad tracks, riding a horse bareback.

"What do Cub Scouts do when they see a little girl on a horse?" Romney recalled in a later interview. "We picked up stones and threw them."