"Romney is different...he’s a profoundly decent man"

Dean Barnett posted a good essay on Hugh Hewitt's blog about Mitt Romney. He used to work for Romney and he discusses the fact that Mitt is a genuinely good and conservative guy. Now facade necessary.

"I knew Romney was special a decade before my brethren in the conservative punditocracy came to the same conclusion. But it is worth noting that I came about the conclusion the same way they have – from first-hand exposure to the guy.
As every reader of this site knows, I don’t find our political class to be particularly impressive. I find them intellectually incurious, pathologically ambitious and morally unmoored. The Democrats are worse than the Republicans, but it’s not a runaway.
But Romney is different. First of all, he’s brilliant. When you spend even a little time with him, you see how his mind attacks a problem from every conceivable angle. This requires an intellectual curiosity and an intellectual industriousness that is foreign to nearly all of our politicians.
Second, he’s a profoundly decent man. All that stuff about what a perfect family he has and how committed he is to it isn’t a crock. And he’s really nice – his affability is no Clintonian act."

He points out that to meet Mitt Romney is to know that he is special. I've seen similar comments before from people who met him in person, like when I went to meet with some Southern Baptists earlier this year. My fellow Latter-day Saints and I would recognize this as the fact that he is worthy of the companionship of the Spirit of God, but others just see that there is something special about him.