Mr. Murdoch’s dim view of Mr. Romney points to a palpable disconnect between the two men, one that has existed since Mr. Romney’s first run for president four years ago, people who know them both said. More than a half-dozen friends and advisers to the two, speaking mostly anonymously to reveal private and frank conversations, said the Murdoch-Romney relationship could be summed up simply: They do not have much of one. 
 
 They have met only a handful of times. Their lukewarm feelings toward each other stem from their encounter at a meeting of The Journal editorial board in 2007, when Mr. Romney visited to pitch himself as the most capable conservative candidate about two months before the Iowa caucuses. 
 
 Romney and Journal staff members who attended said that despite being deeply prepared and animated — particularly on his love for data crunching — Mr. Romney failed to connect with either Mr. Murdoch or The Journal’s editorial page editor, Paul A. Gigot. Instead of articulating a clear and consistent conservative philosophy, he dwelled on organizational charts and executive management, areas of expertise that made him a multimillionaire as the head of his private equity firm, Bain Capital . 
 
 At one point, Mr. Romney declared that “I would probably bring in McKinsey,” the management consulting firm, to help him set up his presidential cabinet, a comment that seemed to startle the editors and left Mr. Murdoch visibly taken aback. 
 
 The Journal’s write-up of that meeting would later glibly refer to Mr. Romney as “Consultant in Chief.” 
 
 Mr. Romney followed up later in the campaign with a second meeting in Mr. Murdoch’s office, but that, too, failed to light a spark. “I don’t think he ever got excited about Romney,” said one associate of Mr. Murdoch’s. 
 
 By the time the first Republican primaries of 2012 were closing in, Mr. Romney met again with The Journal’s editorial board. Mr. Murdoch sat in. “America doesn’t need a manager. America needs a leader,” Mr. Romney told the board. He wore a suit, which he changed out of for a more casual appearance on David Letterman ’s show that evening. And at one point, according to a Journal staff member, he said lightheartedly, “I hope I’m getting better at this.” 
 
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 The Romney campaign felt the meeting went well — so well that it was surprised when The Journal kept hammering him, reprising its complaints about his “inability, or unwillingness, to defend conservative principles.” 
 
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 Fundamentally, Mr. Romney and Mr. Murdoch are very different. Mr. Romney is said to respect Mr. Murdoch as a visionary business mind and deeply admire how he built the company he inherited from his father into a $60 billion global media power. But a teetotaling Mormon from the Midwest and a thrice-married Australian who publishes photos of topless women in one of his British newspapers are bound to have very different world views. 
 
 Mr. Murdoch’s wariness about Mr. Romney is similar to the way many Republican primary voters initially felt about the candidate. Mr. Murdoch wanted anybody else, and could not resist getting swept up in the flavor-of-the-week fickleness that characterized this year’s Republican nominating process. He wrote glowing Twitter messages about Rick Santorum , calling him the only candidate with a “genuine big vision” for the country. 
 
 Along with Roger Ailes , chairman of Fox News, Mr. Murdoch urged Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to run. Both men admire Mr. Christie’s gusto and toughness — a sharp edge they have themselves. “He really wanted Christie,” said one of Mr. Murdoch’s friends. Mr. Ailes, a former campaign strategist for Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan , shares Mr. Murdoch’s disdain of how the Romney campaign is being run, telling people privately that it is too soft. 
 
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 Although Fox News has been cast by liberal critics as an arm of the Romney campaign, its coverage of the presidential election has been far more aggressive toward Mr. Obama than it has been kind to Mr. Romney. 
 
 Mr. Murdoch does much of his sounding off on Twitter, as he did last weekend when he suggested Mr. Romney replace his staff. Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, politely brushed off Mr. Murdoch’s concerns about the staff’s competence. “Governor Romney respects Rupert Murdoch, and also respects his team and has confidence in them,” Ms. Saul said. 
 
 Those who know him say that his fondness for Twitter is classic Murdoch. A compulsive e-mailer and phone caller, he has always had a hyperactive mind. And the impetuous, unfiltered nature of Twitter suits his shoot-from-the hip style. 
 
 Mr. Murdoch’s political influence in the United States has never been anywhere near as potent as it was in Britain , where he once slipped into a private meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron through the back door of 10 Downing Street. But the phone hacking scandal has left him greatly diminished there and rendered him something more of a complicated figure in this country. 
 
 Mr. Romney’s advisers say privately that having Mr. Murdoch sniping at them is better than the alternative. To be praised by him would open the campaign up to criticisms that it is a tool of the conservative establishment. 
 
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 “To his credit , the idea that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t think something could be better run is unimaginable,” said one Romney adviser, who requested anonymity to assess Mr. Murdoch’s well-known self-confidence. “That’s just how he is.” 
 
 Last week, when the campaign invited a few dozen leaders from Wall Street, the news media and Republican politics to an informal discussion with Mr. Romney at a private Manhattan social club, Mr. Murdoch was one of the first to offer a suggestion. 
 
 Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster who was there, recalled that Mr. Murdoch spoke up after the chief executive of Univision, Randy Falco, told Mr. Romney that Mr. Obama had appeared on his network a dozen times and was building a considerable edge with Latino voters. (The meeting was first reported by Politico.) 
 
 “Every campaign attracts a fair number of critics,” Ms. Conway said. “But not every critic is created equal. Rupert Murdoch is a very important voice in the national conversation.” 
 
 When he spoke, Mr. Murdoch did not have much of a question — just more unsolicited advice, this time about the need to win over Latino voters. 
 
 “I hope that you’ll take the fight to President Obama,” he told Mr. Romney. ||||| Rupert Murdoch must have imagined Steve Jobs would be a feisty dinner guest. Even still, the News Corp. chairman couldn't have foreseen that, in one night at the mogul's Carmel, California ranch, Jobs would call his tech people incompetent, get a guy fired, and say that Fox News was literally destroying the world. 
 
 Walter Isaacson's new biography of the Apple co-founder says Jobs railed against the conservative news channel and tried to convince Murdoch to shut it down. His comments came at the 2010 iteration of News Corp.'s annual management retreat. Isaacson writes: 
 
 In return for speaking at the retreat, Jobs got Murdoch to hear him out on Fox News, which he believed was destructive, harmful to the nation, and a blot on Murdoch's reputation. "You're blowing it with Fox News," Jobs told him over dinner. "The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is conservative-destructive, and you've cast your lot with the destructive people. Fox has become a destructive force in our society. You can be better, and this is going to be your legacy if you're not careful." Jobs said he thought Murdoch did not really like how far Fox has gone. "Rupert's a builder, not a tearer-downer," he said... Murdoch later said he was used to people like Jobs complaining about Fox. "He's got sort of a left wing view on this," he said. Jobs asked him to have his folks make a reel of Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck shows - he thought they were more destructive than Bill O'Reilly - and Murdoch agreed to do so. 
 
 Isaacson's book also confirms our 2010 item about how the Wall Street Journal's Gordon McLeod got fired for crossing Jobs at the same Carmel retreat. According to the biography, Jobs said in a post-dinner Q&A that newspapers like the Journal were bungling their use of technology, in part because "you're in New York and anyone who's any good at tech works in Silicon Valley." McLeod, a Gotham based digital executive, took issue, and later told Jobs, "thanks, it was a wonderful evening, but you probably cost me my job." Murdoch added, "It ended up being true." 
 
 Hannity, Beck, O'Reilly and paranoiac Fox News boss Roger Ailes, meanwhile, all still have their jobs. It sounds like somebody missed Steve Jobs's point. If a master persuader of Jobs's caliber couldn't break Murdoch's loyalty to Ailes, it's hard to imagine anyone else will, either. 
 
 [Photo of Jobs and Isaacson's book via Getty. Photo of Murdoch via AP]
– Rupert Murdoch has never been a big fan of Mitt Romney, and the lukewarm feeling is mutual, the New York Times finds. On Romney's two visits to the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal—which printed a scathing attack on the "confused" Romney campaign yesterday—there was "zero enthusiasm, no engagement," a Journal source says. Both Murdoch and Fox News chief Roger Ailes urged New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to run because they admired his toughness and saw Romney as too soft, insiders say. Staff members present at Romney's Journal meetings say Romney left Murdoch cold by dwelling on his management experience instead of coming out with a clear conservative philosophy. Romney aides, speaking under condition of anonymity, say they would rather have Murdoch making critical tweets than praising the campaign and making it look like a tool of the conservative establishment. "To his credit, the idea that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t think something could be better run is unimaginable," one adviser says. "That’s just how he is."