NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com PRINT
Robert Costa
March 8, 2010 4:00 A.M.
Romney in the Wilderness, Waiting
The former Massachusetts governor rebounds with his new book, No Apology.
New York — Mitt Romney, sitting ramrod straight, is gazing up at the gleaming glass boxes on Park Avenue as we zoom through midtown Manhattan. It is lunchtime, and the streets are swarming with business folk — attorneys with lattes, analysts with take-out sushi. For Romney, this is a glimpse of his old world, a world of mergers, acquisitions, and Harvard Business School lingo. His new world, one of big ideas and presidential aspirations, sits on his lap, in the form of his latest book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.
Romney knows how to use his time in the wilderness. Unlike many of his potential Republican foes for the 2012 presidential nomination, Romney has kept a relatively low profile since ending his 2008 primary campaign. No television show, no drama for the former Massachusetts governor. Instead, Romney is laser-focused on electing state and federal Republican candidates in the midterm elections.
That strategy is paying off. In January, Scott Brown, the Bay State’s new GOP senator, credited Romney as being instrumental to his come-from-behind win. Elsewhere, Romney’s political-action committee, Free and Strong America, has donated over $120,000 to Republican candidates over the past year. Last month, he went so far as to defend former president George W. Bush, his party’s battered hero, in a speech at a conservative conference. All of these efforts, and his book, are signals to the GOP faithful that a certain former governor is tanned, rested, and ready.
GETTING TO THE POINT
The release of No Apology has garnered Romney numerous lighthearted television appearances, from The View to The Late Show with David Letterman. The buzz is nice, he says, “and a lot of fun,” but not his purpose. The will-he, won’t-he presidential chatter misses the point as well.
Americans, he explains, do not want to hear horse-race chatter, but desire, strongly, a real and substantive policy debate, be it about geopolitics or domestic policy. No Apology — a 324-page Romney vade mecum chock-full of policy talk, data, charts, anecdotes, quotes, and arguments — is, in his eyes, a step in that direction. It covers a few key policy areas: 100 pages on America’s role in the world, plus chapters on health care, fiscal policy, education, and “the culture of citizenship.”
“I have wanted to write something like this for about 20 years,” Romney says.” He jokes that he “became unemployed unexpectedly” and, “with a little time on my hands,” told himself that “this is the time to do it.”
Developing his book’s theme was easy. “When I was in the private sector, doing business around the world, I became concerned that Americans were not seeing what was happening around the world,” Romney says. “We think of ourselves as being light years ahead of other nations, and that was the case when I was going around the world in the 1960s. But today that is no longer the case. There are other parts of the world that are eclipsing us in terms of productivity, infrastructure, investment in higher education, and technology. Unless we change course, I’m very concerned that America is going to be eclipsed by some of those other nations. So I wanted to tell this story.”
That often meant taking himself off the page. “You know, I think it is great to write a book about one’s personal life experiences and relationships with others — I love reading books like that — but I wanted to write a book about the real concerns I have about the country’s future,” he says.
Romney does not mean to scare his readers with No Apology, and the book’s tone is far from polemical. But he does intend to be frank: “As long as there are people out there, politicians in particular, that say ‘no worries, no problems, all we have to do is adjust the taxes a little bit and things will get better,’ then I think people are not getting the straight story.”
ROMNEY ON ENTITLEMENTS
Romney dedicates a long chapter to America’s fiscal future, detailing his thoughts on the “entitlement nightmare,” the political “shell game” of hiding long-term liabilities, the “mountains of debt,” and the need for a balance sheet for the federal government:
Never before has there been a generation of Americans that has imperiled the following generations’ opportunity for achievement and advance as we have done. And America’s ability to preserve individual freedom and the nation’s security is also in jeopardy, because unless things dramatically change, our debts and obligations will imperil our economy and our military — not because of fierce foreign competitors or the need to engage enemies militarily, but simply because of our own woeful negligence.
He also spends ample time in No Apology explaining the controversial universal-health-care program he helped engineer in Massachusetts. The book’s title works most appropriately here, since Romney doesn’t flinch in defending the “Massachusetts model,” which includes a mandate that residents buy insurance. Romney says it “succeeded in getting our citizens insured without breaking the bank.” He also takes care to explain the difference between a state-by-state approach and Obama’s national approach:
My own preference would be to let each state fashion its own program to meet the distinct needs of its citizens. States could follow the Massachusetts model if they chose, or they could develop plans of their own. These plans, tested in the state “laboratories of democracy,” could be evaluated, compared, improved upon, and adopted by others. But the creation of a national plan is the direction in which Washington is currently moving. If a national approach is ultimately adopted, we should permit individuals to purchase insurance from companies in other states in order to expand choice and competition.
Romney suffered from “schizophrenia” over how to handle his health-care plan during his 2008 run, says political analyst Charlie Cook, but now is realizing that talking about it, as but one example of his “competent” governing, makes sense.
The “competence” tack could work, but to pull it off, Romney might have to shift gears away from the social-conservative issues he relied on in his last presidential campaign. In No Apology, Romney does not distance himself from those values, but attempts to frame them in a way that’s less politically hot by connecting them to broader values of “citizenship.”
“The American culture — hard work, sacrifice, love of opportunity, the pioneering spirit we have, the significance of family, patriotism, the respect for life — all these things feed into it,” Romney says. “These are not just social issues. But we should not minimize what social issues are. They’re really critical, as are the other elements.”
THE AMERICAN FUTURE
The most notable aspect of No Apology is how, for its first third, the book functions as a rumination on the nature of American power. Romney does not see international relations as a web of competing nation-states seeking a balance, but as a competition between four models of geopolitical order — the American model of freedom and democracy, the authoritarian and commerce-heavy Chinese model, the Russian authoritarian energy-based model, and the violent-jihadist model. To win, he writes, America must “be wary and vigilant,” because “by mid-century, out grandchildren may well view Russia with the same concern which we and our parents once did.”
America risks becoming like failed great powers of the past, from the Ottoman Empire to the ancient Chinese and the British Empire, Romney argues. He offers a solution:
The only successful way to overcome foreign advantage . . . is to create an advantage of one’s own — to innovate. And if you conclude that your competitor’s advantage is permanent and insurmountable, the best course is to choose new paths and new products. Over the centuries, the siren songs of protectionism and isolationism have taken down some very impressive empires. . . . I’m reminded of the words from Proverbs, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
Since Obama was elected, “I see other nations having a new glint in their eye,” Romney says. “I see China with an ambition to lead the world. Same with Russia aspiring to be a superpower, and the jihadists have always had their own maniacal ambition.”
“China can be a partner for stability, but I’m not sure they know exactly where they are heading,” he adds. “They have adopted free enterprise, in some respects, and yet they also want to become a very powerful player on the world stage and ultimately want to eclipse us. I don’t think they like the idea that we are as strong as we are in the Pacific and that we have such sway in their region of the world. I think they’d like to readjust that balance. I don’t look at them as an enemy, but as a competitor. Their model, authoritarianism with the absence of freedom, is not a model I want to see become the model for the 21st century for my grandkids.”
While Romney is an avowed supporter of military power, he also spends time in No Apology advocating “soft power.” President Obama, he says, has misunderstood that term’s meaning.
“The greatest shortcoming between our ability and our performance in foreign policy comes in our exercise of soft power,” Romney says. “Our inability to sway and influence affairs in the world without military might has been disappointing over the past year. It is extraordinary to me that we have not been able to dissuade Iran, for instance, from its foolish course. Or North Korea, a nation that is puny in its capabilities, from their course. It just underscores our inability to effectively use diplomacy, the sway of our economic vitality, our cultural advantages — we’re just underperforming in those areas. If we were to organize our effort as effectively in the diplomatic sphere as we do in the private sector, we’d have a lot bigger impact.”
While working on his chapters about foreign policy, Romney found that objective measures of power were hard to come by. So, he developed his own, calling it the “Index of Leading Indicators.” He is the first to say that his model is “easy to criticize,” but hopes that his 14-point outline on everything from GDP levels and tax levels to health-care costs and national-security preparedness is a move toward providing some sort of “corrective” for future leaders trying to make sense of America’s place in the world.
“I really wanted to be able to go back 25 years and calculate for each one of the indices, to see what they said then and see what they said today,” Romney says. “To be honest, I found it beyond my capacity as a writer to get all that data. It was really hard to try and go back 25, 50 years and pull out that data. But we can certainly collect it now. If others have other points they’d like to add to the data index, great, but I think it’s a worthwhile exercise to try and actually track the progress that we’re making in preserving our values and shoring up the foundation of our national strength.”
Do we need a more data-driven political discourse in America? “You can correctly assume that from my book,” Romney laughs. “In the private sector, you must have data. People getting up and pontificating are going to be dismissed at meetings, and probably from their jobs. You have to provide data to demonstrate why your posture is correct. In the public sector, you watch these politicians discussing major issues absent any particular data. I find that astonishing. Now, you want to see both sides of the data — it can be manipulated to prove any point. Yet if you have neutral observers gather the data, or partisans on both sides to present, you can learn from that experience. Otherwise, if you don’t look at data, you’re bound to miss the lessons from the past.”
THE PERSONAL TOUCH
Despite all of the policy stuffed into No Apology, the book also gives us a peek into Romney’s mind, particularly regarding the inspiration of his father, George Romney, a former three-term governor of Michigan and famous automobile executive who served in Nixon’s cabinet after losing the GOP nomination for president in 1968.
“The greatest gift that my father gave me was, frankly, his personal example,” Romney says. “We all love our dads, but as time went on, I recognized just how unique and special he was. When I was a younger boy, I didn’t realize that, but as time went on, I saw that this guy really is a very unusual person, and what he did became more and more meaningful to me, and I began to study it. When I was at business school, the case discussed on the first day of my business-policy class was the American Motors Corporation and the turnaround led by George Romney. You can’t help but think if they’re teaching that at Harvard Business School, then he really is quite a guy. I saw the things he experienced more personally, at a closer inspection point than other people enjoyed, and I wanted to share those perspectives more broadly.”
Those lessons from his father, couched in MBA-speak, are sprinkled throughout the book. Romney sees the United States, much as his father saw General Motors, as a powerful, though hardly infallible, force. “There is nothing as vulnerable as entrenched success,” he says, quoting Romney Sr.
While No Apology works on many levels — as the opening salvo of a potential 2012 campaign, as a critique of Obama, as a fresh application of strategic-consulting metrics to American power — it is most notable for showcasing Romney’s restlessness, and his eagerness to participate in major policy debates.
As Park Avenue streams by his window, Romney continues to speak that world’s language, with talk of models, efficiency, and strategy. Yet it is big ideas about American power, foreign affairs, and fiscal policy that animate him these days, not the bottom line. Far from his political winter, Romney is a man in the political wilderness, waiting, apologia in hand.
— Robert Costa is the William F. Buckley Jr. Fellow at the National Review Institute.
