Mitt Romney is a man of many skills - Sky News Australia

Updated: 14:59, Wednesday August 29, 2012

Mitt Romney, who has been nominated as the Republican Party's US presidential candidate, is a man of many skills.

By the time the Republican was elected governor of Massachusetts - a Democratic stronghold - in 2002, he had already had a successful career in the private sector.

In the 1980s, he made millions as a business consultant and private equity investor, and his fortune today is estimated at more than $US200 million ($A194 million).

Romney, 65, likes to boast that he knows business better than Democratic US President Barack Obama, and believes his success in business is a predictor of success as president.

But Romney's riches are causing his campaign trouble, too. Criticised for legally paying lower tax rates than middle-class Americans, and charged with storing his money in Caribbean tax havens, he's under pressure from the Obama camp to make his tax returns public.

Romney's personal history may also hold disadvantages for him as a candidate. The son of a Michigan governor, Romney is a Mormon in a country where many arch-conservative evangelical Christians are still suspicious of the faith. The US has never elected a Mormon president.

The Republican candidate speaks French, the result of two years as a missionary in France in the 1960s. But he reveals his language skills only reluctantly, for fear of being seen as elitist by US voters.

He has struggled to shake off a reputation for prudishness and difficulty relating to ordinary people, a political handicap in America's personality-driven campaign culture.

While moderate voters give him highest marks, hard-core conservatives and religious voters criticise him for wavering principles and political inconsistency.

Indeed, Romney's evolving positions on environmental protection, abortion rights and, most famously, health reform have earned him criticism as a flip-flopper, a politician whose positions change with the wind.

As governor, he pushed through a Massachusetts health care law that became the model for Obama's later national reforms. But today, Romney has joined the chorus of Republicans against 'Obamacare' - and he says if he's elected, he'll reverse the law.