This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Did he, or did he not, say the f-word? That's what I want to know. And, frankly, I hope he did.

Nine years ago, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney found himself in a crossfire over word choice as head of the Winter Olympics in Utah — a job that by all accounts he performed admirably.

The short-lived firestorm arose when Romney was on his way to a major Olympics ski competition at Snowbasin on Feb. 10, 2002, and found buses and cars filled with frustrated fans who were being held up by a volunteer traffic controller and in danger of missing the event.

Romney confronted the traffic controller, letting him know that blocking traffic to the event was unacceptable. That was leadership. And it wasn't the first or the last time that Romney demonstrated strong leadership.

But when the traffic controller reported that Romney had punctuated the dressing down with the f-word, Romney denied it. He said he hadn't used that word even in high school, where his strongest epithet was "H E double hockey sticks."

That explanation seemed attuned to the Mormon culture in Utah, where "flip" and "bullcrap" and "oh, my heck" are among the quaint euphemisms of choice for LDS Church members who have an aversion to cursing. So Romney's addition of "double hockey sticks" to the Mormon lexicon of substitutes for honest-to-goodness profanity was perfect.

Strong leadership often is accompanied by great passion. And while I would argue that lacing one's daily conversation with curses is not advisable, there are certain situations in which naughty words are the best way to emphasize a point.

To my mind, and apparently to Romney's, a volunteer traffic controller threatening to force thousands of Olympics patrons to miss a quadrennial event they had come from far and wide and paid a packet to see, qualified as one of those situations requiring an emphatic response.

Though this long-ago contretemps was considered trivial at the time, it was nevertheless consistent with what has come to be known today as "the Romney problem."

Let me explain. Romney has demonstrated a great talent for tackling large problems and guiding them to a positive outcome. His turning around of the financially troubled and scandal-plagued 2002 Olympics, making it the most successful Winter Games in history, is well-documented.

The New Yorker recently published an article about Romney's universal health care plan that was passed in Massachusetts while he was governor. The article documented how Romney was able to graft traditional conservative principles onto an ostensibly socialist idea as a means of solving a problem that was eating up about a third of the state's economy.

Romney negotiated his way around the political pitfalls inherent in a Republican governor relying on information from the conservative Heritage Foundation while listening to liberal Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, managing to mesh with the Democratic Legislature in one of the most liberal states in the country. He worked out a way that all the parties involved could take credit for a much-praised health care plan.

But then there is the other Romney. The one with the perfect hair and eternal grin who looks almost goofy as he tries to explain why his positions on key issues today are not really that different from his positions back then. Indeed, they are not "really that different." They are polar opposites.

It is no surprise that Romney's shameless flip-flopping on everything from abortion to gay rights to the National Rifle Association to the government bailout of financial institutions would give pause to the GOP's tea party set. Well might they ask, as they often do, what did he believe and when did he believe it?

So which Romney is it? Is he the dynamic leader who made sure that Olympic patrons made it to the venue on time? Or is he the one who dances up and down and blurts "H E double hockey sticks" when he really means something else?