Artificial leadership

One of my favorite scenes in the film Gladiator is when Maximus is in the arena and has an opponent at his mercy. He looks to the crowd for direction, and they demand he should kill the defeated gladiator. The Emperor, Commodus, indicates likewise. However, Maximus defies the will of both and spares his vanquished foe. And the crowd loves him even more.

The look on Commodus' face as the camera cuts away is priceless--he cannot comprehend why he is despised for giving the people what they want while Maximus is loved for defying them. But Maximus knows, he defied them while appealing to their better instincts. They are better people for being defied. And somehow, they realize that.

But this post isn't about gladiators. It's about something even more vicious: politics. Specifically, political leadership.

A recent article by Gabriel Schoenfeld made what I believe to be a very good point about one of the reasons Romney lost. He was trying to be someone he wasn't, trying too hard to reflect the will of the Republican establishment rather than just being himself.

Both as a candidate and as a president, George W. Bush had his share of defects. But one of the reasons he twice won presidential elections is that he was exactly who he said he was. Voters could tell, and they liked that in a leader. Both as a man and as a governor, Mitt Romney had his share of virtues, and no doubt they would have been on display had he become president. But one of the reasons he lost twice is that he was often not who he said he was. Voters could tell that, too—the artificiality of his focus-group-chosen language was often striking—and they did not like it at all. A good marketing team would have understood that packaging Mitt Romney as something he was not was a mistake. Indeed, a really good marketing team would not have packaged him at all. They would have let this impressive man be himself. 

More pertinently, this impressive man could himself have chosen to remain himself. David Frum maintains that Romney, one of the Republican Party’s “most articulate and intelligent standard-bearers in decades,” was “forced” by ideological conservatives “to jettison his own best self and best judgment.” There is of course something to this argument. Conservatives in key states, the argument continues, have a lock on the primary process. If Romney had not concealed his true moderate self and tacked to the right, he would have had little chance of capturing the Republican nomination. We cannot rerun history backward to see if such an analysis is correct. But a case can be made that voters of every stripe, including conservatives, would have had far more respect for Romney if he had resisted the conservative Siren calls to sail in their direction and, instead of posing as a “severe conservative,” had stood fast for what he believed. 

Our country’s greatest presidents, from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, did not need to bend to the whims of the electorate. By dint of their principled statesmanship, they bent the electorate to their will. They educated it. They persuaded it. They brought it along. They certainly did not need application programming interfaces to get elected and to accomplish what they accomplished. Nor did Abraham Lincoln need to hire a “messaging professional” to write the Gettysburg Address.

Which brings me to Senator Rubio. On immigration he is not making Romney's mistake. Instead, he is defying the very Tea Party support that got him elected. And he is even trying to persuade that base to follow him.

We have yet to see whether he will be successful. But Senator Rubio is demonstrating true political leadership; the sort of leadership that challenges the electorate to rise above their initial inclinations.

If Rubio succeeds, he will be a force to be reckoned with. But even if he fails, it is something other than a leadership failure. Returning again to the gladiator context, Theodore Roosevelt once said:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

With the Senate passing an immigration reform bill, and the House about to take it up, now we will see whether the House Republicans are critics or doers. Regardless of the outcome, Senator Rubio has already answered that question for us.

My Year in Ticket Stubs

So, as I was cleaning my room tonight this is what I found:

Tickets to: 

• Gettysburg Battlefield (12/10/11)
• the Nutcracker (12/11) 
• The Hunger Games (3/25/12)
• Midsummer Night's Dream play (3/30/12)
• The Avengers (5/4/12) 
• Avengers (5/10/12) 
• Avengers (5/20/12) 
• The Avengers (5/29/12)
• Brave (6/23/12) 
• Bourne Legacy (8/11/12)
• Amazing Spiderman (8/21/12)
• Colonial Williamsberg (9/12) 
• Dark Knight Rises (9/12/12) 
• Values Voter Summit Gala (9/15/12) 
• Disney World (9/28/12) 
• Ryan Rally VIP ticket 
• Argo (10/27/12) 
• Romney Rally VIP ticket  
• Wreck-It-Ralph (11/9/12) 
• Skyfall (11/18/12)
• The Hobbit (12/15/12)
• Les Miserables the play (12/15/12) 
• The Hobbit 48 FPS (12/24/12) 
• Les Miserables (12/26/12)

There is a reviewer who ranks movies as the year goes on. Do you all think I should do that too? This is what it would look like. 

I guess I can make a chronicle of my life based on my messy room. Did you see any of these things? What was your favorite? 

Posted by Jeremiah Lorrig

Click here for more movie reviews.

Whither the Republican party?

Tuesday’s defeat gives the Republican party a perfect opportunity to reform itself. Losses, more than victories, force reevaluation; and I have already read more articles than I can remember on the Republican party's path forward. So far, two main positions have emerged. One is that the party has drifted too far to the right and alienated voters. They’re right. The other is that the election was lost because foundational conservative principles have been abandoned. They’re also right.

Let me explain.

First, the Republican party needs to moderate. Akin and Mourdock were embarrassing disasters when asked softball questions about abortion and consequently threw away two winnable Senate seats. Tea party darling Michele Bachmann barely won. Alan West, another tea party favorite, appears to have lost (despite outspending his opponent by 4 times) but is demanding a recount. Ballot measures legalizing gay marriage passed in Maine, Maryland, and Washington, and a gay marriage ban was defeated in Minnesota. In sum, Social conservatism--at least as presented by the Republicans--was strongly rejected.

Republicans are now perceived as the anti-immigrant, anti-woman, and anti-compassion party that is only concerned about how the rich can get richer. Those charges may be largely false, but in politics perception is more important than reality. Especially when little is done to rebut these accusations. As one critic wrote:

The ideas are gone. The GOP is driven by cults of personality. Palin and other know-nothings. The Hispanic vote is sought through tokens who say things the anti-intellectual base likes to hear. Rubio would be a disaster. Whereas Conservative intellectuals used to make their home in this party, most thoughtful intellectuals sit outside its doors, locked out by the Tea Party idiots and the Fox News and talk-radio shouting heads. They’ve build a cottage industry of bad books, drug-like media, and populist propaganda, but they are losing elections because the business of politics is not the same as the business of business. It sells, but win elections it does not. This political industry has many flaws, but its most debilitating one has been to align itself with the lowest-brow Christian group in the country: Protestant Evangelical Fundamentalists. These evolution denying, global warming outraged, ahistorical nativists have single-handedly driven the GOP into a reactionary defensiveness that once belonged on the other side of the aisle. In the process they will continue to alienate thinking people and people who are threatened by their constant caricatures of themselves, even when the caricature isn’t wholly true. Hispanics don’t vote for Republicans because they don’t trust their general image. And why should they! Listen to their fearful fetishizing over the English language many of them can barely speak and don’t seem to read. Or their ignorance of the history of Hispanic culture and heritage native to this country.

That is harsh, but embarrassingly true. Despite having a robust cannon, many of today’s Republicans seem more interested in their echo chamber and have exchanged Burke and Buckley for Beck and Barton.

Second, the party needs to become more conservative. As was always the risk with selecting Romney, it was a failure of the base to turn out that led to this loss. Romney soundly won independents, but still got fewer total votes than McCain in 2004. Whether because the conservative wing of the country distrusted him, the evangelicals couldn’t vote for a Mormon, or some other reason, Tuesday’s loss was largely self-inflicted.

So how can those two apparently opposite positions be reconciled? Simply. We need not a reexamination of our conservative principles, but a reapplication of those principles to today’s challenges. It is the same adjustment Tony Blair made in his reformation of Britain’s Labour party:

In my view, we needed a complete, top-to-bottom reorientation of our programme and policies. In particular, we needed to separate conceptually a commitment to our values (timeless) from their application (time-bound).

* * *

It wasn’t at all about changing the basic values or purpose of progressive politics; on the contrary, it was about retrieving them from the deadweight of political and cultural dogma that didn’t merely obscure those values and that purpose, but also defeated them.

The Democratic party made a similar adjustment after the 2004 loss, “mainstreaming and moderating the message, but not changing the ideals, of the left. In Obama, Democrats found someone who shared all of the beliefs of the liberal base but who could talk about them in such a way as not to terrify moderate voters.”

Would that we could learn that lesson. Today’s Republican party has confused its principles with its ideology. Take tax cuts for example: originally touted as a method to shrink the government (“starve the beast”), they are now a hill to die on come hell or high deficits. On immigration reform the “pro-family” and “pro-federalism” party advocates ripping families apart, destroying the very local communities it praises. Republican criticisms of welfare now sound less like caring about the poor by lifting them out of poverty and more like resenting them for being poor and costing so much. They might as well die and decrease the surplus expense (along with “all them illegals”). After Tuesday’s defeat, the county-by-county map is used to bolster a false sense of majority, implicitly telling all those who live in the city that there is no room for them in this tent (since city-dwellers are all moochers anyway). Even with abortion, where the pro-life cause has more support from the general population than ever before, Republicans can’t explain their position in a way that cares about the baby, let alone the mother. Is it any surprise that this agenda was rejected? It practically stereotypes itself.

The application of conservative principles needs moderation--which itself is a conservative principle. The ability to order issues by importance, to know when to compromise, and, ultimately, to prudently assess any situation should be a strength of any conservative party. This requires recognizing that while foundational principles don’t change depending on the circumstances, the application of those principles may. The Republican party currently has it backwards: rigid application of fluid principles rather than reasonable application of foundational principles.

We also need better candidates. Many are tempted to blame Romney for the loss. I don’t. More than any other candidate (with the possible exception of Tim Pawlenty, who dropped out way too early), Romney’s instincts were to be reasonable. That is half of the coin, and he was the only candidate that had it. And his conservative principles were steadily increasing. (For those who think that he didn’t have credibility on Obamacare, his position was no worse than Santorum on budget restraint, Gingrich or Cain on family values, or Perry on crony capitalism. And Romney actually talked about federalism when it came to health care. When was the last time any other major Republican figure did that?)

What we need are candidates firmly grounded in conservative thought and prepared to explain it in reasonable terms. Unfortunately, in this election, many candidates had one or the other, but few had both. November 6, 2012, gives the Republican party a perfect opportunity to finally tackle these big issues. Whether it will do so, taking a long term view instead of simply attempting to score cheap political points against the Democrats, remains to be seen.

Polling speculation

Since everyone seems to have a polling prediction, I'll add mine. I mentioned this a few weeks ago, but in the final stages of the election it is worth expanding. We’re hearing a lot about the swing states right now. What no one seems to be taking about, however, is that this is Romney’s second campaign of the year in several of those states: he also held vital primaries in Ohio, Florida, Iowa, and Michigan (and won all but Iowa).

So how did he do last time? Well, according to polling in each state in the final weeks before the election Romney was either tied or slightly behind--sometimes by as many as 10 points. And then he surged to win the state (except for Iowa, where he lost by 0.1 percentage point).
Take Ohio, for example. Here is the Real Clear Politics average of the polling going into the primary. Romney is shown in purple.

The same pattern appeared in Florida.

And Iowa (even though Romney ultimately didn't win). 

And Michigan.

In each of those states, Romney's opponent (often Santorum) saw a polling lead disappear in the final days before the vote.

And that's not all. A closer examination reveals something even more interesting. In all four of those states, polling showed a Romney surge in the final days. But when the results came in, Romney scored even better than the polls suggested. In Ohio, Romney finished 3.8 points ahead of the RCP average. Florida was 4.6 points above polling. Iowa was 1.7 points above polling. And Michigan was 3.8 points above polling. In other words, in each of those contests Romney did noticeably better than the polls predicted.

Now granted, the demographics are in the general and the primary. And this is a two-way race, rather than a multi-way race. But still, a close race with Romney in Ohio, Florida, Iowa, or Michigan, with one week to go, is not a promising spot.

Just ask Rick Santorum.

President Obama: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

In the last 8 days, this race has radically transformed. Before the first debate, the mood on the right was starting to sour, and the left was starting to grin. It was looking to be quickly sown up for President Obama, regardless of the sagging economy or sad state of affairs overseas.

Then something unexpected happened. A Republican did better in a presidential debate than any other in my lifetime. If you were a conservative in my generation, you were raised on stories of Ronald Reagan and "there you go again." But they were myths and legends. While Romney's performance was nowhere near as mythical, it was as if a young boy decided to take on some bullies with inspiration from King Arthur. To those of us on the right, it was a breath of the cleanest air we'd smelled in years.

On its own, though, it might have been just a little consolation amidst a big mess. But that same night, Barak Obama, arguably the greatest liberal politician in 50 years, had a bad night. There's been a lot of speculation as to why, but I think the issue is his handling team was so anxious to avoid the weaknesses of their candidate in the format (his 2008 debates against Hillary were not his best moment, whereas Romney came out the winner after 22 debates this spring). Obama couldn't look angry, he couldn't look condescending, he couldn't look mean. Perhaps they hoped Romney would be all those things and Obama would come out looking the bigger man. The problem is that while he might have looked young and virile next to the one-foot-in-the-grave John McCain, next to the extremely fit Romney (who, according to their physical exams, actually has the lower resting heart rate, regardless of the perception of Obama being the cooler cucumber), he seems thin and tired. Quite remarkable seeing as how he is almost ten years younger than his opponent.

The problem is, of course, that Obama couldn't look angry, but he has a temper (one that we usually see when he's confronted with what he thinks is ignorance or stupidity). He couldn't be condescending, but he's a professor, so he is naturally condescending; and, ultimately, he really wanted to be mean to Mitt Romney. His supporters would have loved it if he was because they hate Mitt Romney and everything he represents. But he needed to win over the moderates, the one's who wanted a "new tone" in Washington. Yet, in an attempt to deny his nature, he lost both.

That's what the media is not saying (but they are implying), that Obama went in to debate one to sow up any undecided moderates still out there. Instead, he disappointed his own base. You know this because ultimately the story coming out of the debate was not how well Romney did (and he did very well, historically well), but how bad Obama performed (this being the issue that is closer to the media's heart: he let them down). Biden, therefore, was not concerned last night with winning over the undecided independents, but with winning BACK the base. The fact that such a rude, blustering, outrageously patronizing and condescending performance could be greeted with statements on Facebook like "Biden kicked ass tonight!" is proof that the Obama ticket is trying to play to a very specific, angry, liberal group, without whom they cannot win the election. A group that felt unhappy and unrepresented in the last debate. Yet the values of that very group run contrary to those of the moderates. Usually, the liberal candidates play to the moderates and wink to the left. Usually the left accepts this. Not this time.

So, Barak Obama is caught between a rock and a hard place. Biden played to the angry left last night. But will Obama? The left hopes he will; they hope he will ream Mitt Romney and show him how stupid he really is. But Romney is not stupid, and such an outburst would terribly cripple the President with the moderates and undecided. Yet will the left settle for less? With his reelection bid falling to pieces a month out from the election, what does Obama do to save his campaign? What can he do?

I do not have the guts to predict a Romney win at this point (though I bet I could get good odds), but I will say unless Obama can find a way to reframe the race, he is going to continue to lose ground. Since 1960, we have only had three presidents serve out 2 full terms. I do not think it likely that we shall soon have four.

Post by Daniel Noa

We have a nominee

Earlier this week Mitt Romney passed the magic number of delegates needed to clinch the Republican Party nomination. Back in February, when the race was still tight, I wrote this about Romney:

I am looking for a candidate who I believe can administer the executive branch of the Federal government. From budgets to bureaucracy and czars to cronyism, Obama has made a mess of the office. All the Republican candidates promise to clean up the mess and I think they all would try--but Romney actually has done it before. Under his leadership, Bain Capital got off the ground and turned a profit, Massachusetts balanced its budget, and the 2002 Olympics went from hundreds of millions in deficits and the risk of being canceled to coming out $100 million ahead. His record in Massachusetts, especially at the beginning of his term, is quite impressive. As the Club for Growth explains:

Governor Romney receives credit for reducing actual spending unilaterally in Fiscal Year FY2003, even though he entered office halfway into the fiscal year, because of the tremendous spending cuts he forced down the Legislature’s throat in January of 2003. Facing a $650 million deficit he inherited from the previous administration, Romney convinced the unfriendly State Legislature to grant him unilateral power to make budget cuts and unveiled $343 million in cuts to cities, healthcare, and state agencies. This fiscal discipline continued in 2004, in which Romney continued to slash “nearly every part of state government” to close a $3 billion deficit.

He was also able to nudge the state to the right in other ways, despite having to work with a Democrat legislature. And he did it all without raising taxes (although he did raise some fees and did close tax loopholes, making the effective tax rate higher for some). That’s the approach that needs to be taken federally and Romney has not only stated that he is willing, but also shown that he is able, to do it.

You can read the rest of my endorsement here.

In the meantime, Romney is already hitting Obama’s record hard.

Can Romney Beat Obama?

Source NewHour

Ever since the early days of the 2012 GOP primary there has been a chorus of commentators who have said that Romney is the only person who could beat Obama in November. This claim was challenged by people on the far right who argue that Romney cannot inspire the base and will lose because of that like McCain.

In short the whole argument has centered around the question “Can Romney beat Obama?”

This is the wrong question.

Over the last several months I have been advocating a new theory. I imagine that I am setting myself up for criticism from both my friends in the GOP establishment and in the Tea Party (yes, I am leaving out my friends on the left because they don’t participate in Republican politics). This, however, is the way I see it. Here it is: Obama can’t be defeated. But don’t give up in despair!

My theory is that incumbents cannot be defeated -- they lose.

Think about it. Bush Sr., Carter, Hoover. They all lost their office not because someone else showed up with a better message. They didn’t lose because some “electable” candidate toppled them. They didn’t lose because the other side’s base showed up in droves. They lost because their first term was seen as a failure of leadership.

They did such a bad job that people showed up to vote against them.

What does that mean today? It means that the ball in in Obama’s court. No matter who the GOP ran against him that person would have been nothing more than what Romney is: the other guy.

I personally have a lot of hope that we will see new leadership in DC. I believe that Obama deserves to lose because he has been a failure of leadership. Unlike Clinton in the 90s, Obama hasn’t worked with the Democrats in the House and Senate (let alone the Republicans). He has made bold declarations about his beliefs, but has been unable to put those beliefs into practice.

Not a single Democrat voted for his “budget” because it was laughable. He has not walked across the aisle (like Clinton did) and worked with Republicans on a single issue. He has doubled the already huge national debt and has no believable plan to pay it off. Even if you agree with his ideas, he is a failure of a president. 


I hope that people will see that in November. Because Obama cannot be defeated, but he can lose.

Source:White House Flickr

I Like Lakes!

Mitt Romney is running for president and you know what? We both like lakes!

 This video is cleaver and shows just how much Mitt and I have in common.

In fact, we seem to share the same feelings on a lot of things, including Vampires! "I don't like Vampires personally, I don't know any."

 

This random post by Jeremiah Lorrig

Will There be a Brokered Convention in Tampa?

I just saw a headline that cited Rick Santorum indicating that a convention floor fight would be good for the Republican Party. That may or may not be true but the truth of the matter is that it will not happen. The math is easy, and there will only be one ballot at the Convention in Tampa.

First, if what people are saying is right and Santorum has a chance to come back, it will take a huge swing. If that were to happen (and it is possible, if not likely), he would have to sweep the remaining states and doing something like that will build such huge momentum that he will have the necessarily delegates at the convention. The swing would have to be that big.

Let's say, however, that Santorum only gets close and Romney somehow fails to make the 1,144 pledged delegates in the last few states. That would mean that the Gingrich and Paul delegates would chose the nominee. I have heard people in both of those camps argue that they will make their play there and that Newt (or Paul) could hold his ground and win.

That is not true. I was enlightened on this by a Karl Rove interview where he explained RNC rule 40. Basically, rule 40 means that only candidates who have the support of a plurality of delegates in 5 or more states will be on the first ballot in Tampa. There will be only two candidates who meet that criteria: Romney and Santorum. That means that there are only two options for the 2,286 delegates to vote for. You don't have to be an election expert to do the math. When there are only two options and only a majority wins, there will be quick work and no run off.

I hope post isn't too heady or political, but a convention battle is not likely. There are over 400 delegates that are unallocated and they will also be fought over, but the bottom line is that the nomination if it is not won outright by a series of strong wins will be won over the phone and in meetings all over the country. Romney and Santorum will be wining and dinning with them because in the end, it will all be decided on the first ballot.

The split: Romney or someone else?

This blog isn’t the only one split over who to support for the Republican nomination. PowerLine, one of my favorite political blogs, is also split. John Hinderaker writes supporting Romney:

Rick Santorum is a bright, well-intentioned guy. But the idea that he is the strongest candidate the Republicans can nominate for the presidency strikes me, with all due respect, as ludicrous. Put aside the fact that Santorum lost his last race by 18 points in his home state of Pennsylvania: not exactly an auspicious way to kick off a presidential campaign. Rather, consider that Santorum has always been most passionate about the social issues. Is that really what the GOP wants to talk to voters about in 2012, when the country–the Brokest Nation In History, as Mark Steyn puts it–is $15 trillion in debt; when the Obama administration has driven our economy into the most prolonged funk since the Great Depression; and when Barack Obama has instituted the most corrupt system of cronyism in American history? Seriously?

Scott Johnson (who also concedes that Romney is probably the best of a bad lot) responds defending not falling in behind Romney at this point:

The resistance to Romney among a large part of the base of the Republican Party, however, suggests to me that Romney himself would be less than a stellar candidate against Obama. He’s got problems that the non-Romneys have successfully exploited. Romney’s defense of Romneycare in the debates has been a recurrent thumb in the eye to the not inconsiderable number of Republicans for whom repeal of Obamacare is a priority along with with fiscal and economic issues.

* * *

The inclination of Republican primary voters and caucus goers to support Gingrich or Santorum is not the sign of a character flaw or mental defect on their part. It is a sign that Romney is a problematic candidate for the party whose standard bearer he seeks to be. Decrying the failure of Republican voters for failing to fall in line behind him seems to me something less than a winning argument.

I’m still supporting Romney. But I do worry about his difficulty energizing his base.

If nothing else, this reminds us why we have primaries.

The Choice is Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum: VOTE for Mitt.

Earlier this week Jeremiah made the case for Santorum. And he did so quite well. In fact, I would not object to voting for Santorum in the general election. He’d certainly be an improvement over Obama.

But in the primary, I’m backing Romney. As politics is the art of the possible, every election is properly approached with a “who is my best option” attitude. No one person can, or should be, an end-all savior. So from that perspective, Romney is appealing because I think he is the best option.

With that in mind, I’ll first share my concerns with Santorum. While not nearly as large as my objections to Gingrich or Paul, they remain nonetheless.

Specifically, I worry about his ability to manage money. I read his book It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, and was surprised at Santorum’s willingness to start new federal programs to address virtually every local cultural issue. I’m not convinced that this is a proper federal approach, and is particularly misguided in this time of virtually unstoppable federal spending. As a Senator, the Club for Growth determined that he had “a mixed record and showed clear signs of varying his votes based on the election calendar.” Specifically, when he wasn’t preaching fiscal restraint during elections, his “record is plagued by the big-spending habits that Republicans adopted during the Bush years of 2001-2006.” Finally, in the early 2000s, he started a charity to help the Pennsylvania poor. However, most of the money it raised went to running the charity, and only a small portion was actually used for the intended purpose. Poor management (outside of his campaign management) and excessive spending seem to follow Santorum around.

This is not to say that he would be a bad president. But it does indicate that his weakness is managing budgets and running organizations. Since the role of President is administrative even more than legislative, I want someone who I know can administer.

And while I’m on the topic of money, I also find that how a candidate earns his money and what they do with it is another reflection of their character. Santorum recently released his tax records, which show an annual income of around a million dollars - much of it made from lobbying and consulting. Of that, however, only 1.8% made it to charity. Romney, while having a much higher annual income, gives around 14% to charity and came by his wealth from good management of business rather than political lobbying.

I am looking for a candidate who I believe can administer the executive branch of the Federal government. From budgets to bureaucracy and czars to cronyism, Obama has made a mess of the office. All the Republican candidates promise to clean up the mess and I think they all would try--but Romney actually has done it before. Under his leadership, Bain Capital got off the ground and turned a profit, Massachusetts balanced its budget, and the 2002 Olympics went from hundreds of millions in deficits and the risk of being canceled to coming out $100 million ahead. His record in Massachusetts, especially at the beginning of his term, is quite impressive. As the Club for Growth explains:

Governor Romney receives credit for reducing actual spending unilaterally in Fiscal Year FY2003, even though he entered office halfway into the fiscal year, because of the tremendous spending cuts he forced down the Legislature’s throat in January of 2003. Facing a $650 million deficit he inherited from the previous administration, Romney convinced the unfriendly State Legislature to grant him unilateral power to make budget cuts and unveiled $343 million in cuts to cities, healthcare, and state agencies. This fiscal discipline continued in 2004, in which Romney continued to slash “nearly every part of state government” to close a $3 billion deficit.

He was also able to nudge the state to the right in other ways, despite having to work with a Democrat legislature. And he did it all without raising taxes (although he did raise some fees and did close tax loopholes, making the effective tax rate higher for some). That’s the approach that needs to be taken federally and Romney has not only stated that he is willing, but also shown that he is able, to do it.

And, of course, it barely needs mentioning that Romney’s personal life is exemplary. He has been married to his wife Ann for 43 years, whom he stood by through her battles with both multiple sclerosis and cancer. Together they raised their five children, who are now fully grown with children of their own. And in an age known for CEOs taking massive bonuses while their companies fell apart, at Bain, Romney made a point to spread profits to his employees, often keeping less than 10% for himself.

Now I realize he has been accused of being a political chameleon ready to compromise on the social issues of abortion and gay marriage. But, as some have noted, his record in MA is not nearly the blot it is being portrayed. According to those who worked with Romney while he was governor of Massachusetts, many of his so-called “compromises” were actually decisions outside of his control or efforts to mitigate even larger damage. He vetoed bills increasing access to the abortion causing morning-after pill and allowing embryo-destroying stem cell research. He also was highly involved in the effort to amend the constitution to define marriage, and then again in the effort to kill the amendment once it was amended to include civil unions. Finally, particularly relevant at this point is his defense of Catholic charities right to not facilitate adoptions for homosexual couples.

And finally, I cannot write a recommendation of Romney without mentioning what many are calling his biggest failure: the Massachusetts healthcare reform upon which the national healthcare bill is based. But here again, in his defense, Romney has demonstrated an understanding of the federal limits that only reinforces the unconstitutionality of taking a state program nationwide. In so doing, he has shown respect both for the democratic process, proper state authority, and federalism, all at once. If state authority--or as some improperly call it “state’s rights”--means anything it means that states can do things the federal government can’t. It also means that states can adopt misguided policies which, until they are changed, remain in effect. And finally, it means that the states truly still can act as mini-laboratories.

What the nation most needs in a president is not a legislator-in-chief. That’s Congress’ job and those issues must be addressed in legislative races. What we need is a president who can both use the executive power he has to administer the vast federal bureaucracy and who understands the limits of his office and the tenants of federalism.

All candidates in the race are striving to be that candidate. Romney has demonstrated that he already is.

________________

Editor's note: the authors of this blog were divided between Romney and Santorum. Click here to see the case for Santorum.