As his make-or-break Michigan primary approaches, Mitt Romney is betting on his biography. Positioning himself as the home state boy done good who will do right by his home state, a new Romney ad says the contest there is "personal." But while a New York Times headline proclaimed that "Romney embraces his Michigan roots" and the Politico announced "Romney plays nostalgia card in Michigan," less attention is apparently being paid to Romney's revisionist history. His claims notwithstanding, the man who declared he will save Michigan's auto economy is not just "a guy from Detroit."
Last week, Romney teed up his upcoming humble home state roots in an interview with Katie Couric on CBS News. Asked if he's frustrated with his primary campaign showing so far, Romney presented his roots as more akin to rapper Eminem and less like that of the son of American Motors CEO turned Michigan Governor George Romney:

"Why would I be frustrated? This is fabulous!" Romney said. "Literally, at the beginning of my campaign I was number five or six off the list. People said 'how do you think you can run against John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson?' Now I'm in the lead in every early state - tied for the lead or in the lead. I'm in rarefied air. Hey, for a guy from Detroit, this is pretty cool."

Mitt Romney may have been born in Detroit, but his Motor City biography ends there. As I detailed last week, Romney was raised in a life of comfort and privileged in the very wealthy suburb of Bloomfield Hills. Detroit may have been just miles away, but for all intents and purposes, it was on the other side of the moon. In median lily-white Bloomfield Hills, median household income is more than five times greater than Detroit and the median home value ten times higher.
With one apparent exception, you'd never know Romney came not from the mean streets of Detroit, but instead the town which calls itself the home of the Bloomfield Open Hunt Club and the training site for the Michigan Olympic Equestrian Team. As the Politico reported on Sunday:

Earlier in the day, not far from his childhood home outside Detroit, Romney slung his arm around the shoulder of his first-grade teacher and walked her outside after a speech to introduce her to the press corps.
The beaming candidate delighted in explaining why it was that Mrs. Gloria Blazo, now 78 and still clutching her roster from Romney's 1953-1954 class, knew him as "Billy" at Vaughn Elementary School in Bloomfield Hills. (It's a derivative of his first name, Willard).

As the AP noted, Mitt is going for the trifecta with his Michigan homeboy pitch. He's not merely reaching for the title of favorite son, but claiming the business acumen and auto industry roots needed to turn the state around. (His acolytes at the National Review would add that Mitt's tearing up at a Michigan voter's recollection of his father should have earned him bonus authenticity points as well.)
Yet it is Mitt Romney who needs Michigan to turn around his flagging campaign. His attacks on John McCain may yet help him win the too-close-to-call contest. But despite his average Joe from Detroit air-brushing of his biography, Romney may yet fulfill Mike Huckabee's description of him, "I believe most Americans want their next president to remind them of the guy who they work with, not the guy who laid them off."
UPDATE 1: As the Politco reported last night, the Romney campaign has now added a Potemkin photo-op to its facade of authenticity in Michigan:

A well-publicized weekend photo-op for Mitt Romney turns out to have been missing a piece of information that might have undermined its credibility: the unemployed single mom at the center of the event was the mother of a Romney staffer.

UPDATE 2: The day after Romney's victory in Michigan, Ron Fournier aptly declared, "Mitt Won, Authenticity Lost."