Feb. 4, 1962 - George Romney told a national TV audience today that “the Republican image needs improvement.” In the past, he said, it had been “too much identified as a business party” when it should have served as the political organ interested in “people as a whole.” Mr. Romney, president of American Motors Corporation, appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He made it all but certain that he would announce this week as Republican candidate for Governor of Michigan. At times, he sounded like a man looking beyond the confines of Michigan politics. “I’ve had a great deal of experience at bringing people together who have different viewpoints,” he told a questioner who had asked if Mr. Romney thought he could unite Republicans as diverse as Governor Rockefeller of New York and Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Mr. Romney has been the beneficiary of a publicity boom reminiscent of the one that brought Wendell L. Wilkie out of obscurity to the Republican Presidential nomination in 1940. Mr. Romney is now widely discussed as a potential contender for the 1964 nomination.
