To Get A Grasp On Mitt Romney, Start With The Lesson Of The Muffin

If you want to understand who Mitt Romney really is, go beyond the position papers, stump speeches and preposterously presidential coif, and start with muffins.

For most eaters, a muffin is consumed unthinkingly, in big messy bites, pawing last crumbs off the wrapper because, well, they taste good. For Mr. Romney, however, a muffin is an analytical challenge — a risk to be weighed.

Indeed, eating muffins the Romney way takes discipline: He consumes the top, and only the top, to better avoid the unhealthy butter that supposedly flows downward during baking, according to an account by one of his biographers.

“I was flying somewhere, I think Iowa, and Romney was on the same flight,” said Scott Helman, a staff writer at the Boston Globe and a co-author of “The Real Romney.” “We were chitchatting in the waiting area. He was eating a muffin, and he starts talking about, ‘Hey, did you know that the butter sinks to the bottom?’”

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