Over Christmas holidays in 2010, Adam Sandler movie bad guy Mitt Romney polled his family and held a vote as to whether he should run for president. The result: Two said yes. The other ten—Romney himself included—said no.

And yet! Romney ran anyway, and lost, though by not as pronounced a margin. Dan Balz's book Collision 2012 documents how much Romney didn't want to be president, how hard he tried not to set up an elaborate campaign infrastructure, how little he wanted to spend two years of his life working 10 hours a day:

In an interview with Balz that's placed at the very end of "Collision 2012," Romney explained that he ultimately decided to run when he saw the other (leaving-something-to-be-desired) candidates in the GOP field.

"I didn't think that any one of them had a good chance of defeating the president," he told Balz, "and in some cases I thought that they lacked the experience and perspective necessary to do what was essential to get the country on track."