Over the past several months, Mitt Romney has been an excellent presidential candidate. He has performed superbly in the debates. He has outorganized his rivals. He has relentlessly stayed on his core theme of putting Americans back to work. He has taken Rick Perry apart with a cold ruthlessness that is a wonder to behold.
[R]omney’s skills are not to be underestimated. In the first place, he doesn’t throw interceptions. As with quarterbacks, the chief job of a president is not to give the game away with unforced errors. Romney does not take excessive risks. He doesn’t make decisions without advance preparation.
He does adapt. It has been stunning to see how much better Romney is as a candidate this time around than in 2008. This improvement must have come from a pretty thorough period of self-examination and self-correction.
He seems to know how to pick staff. His economic advisers include R. Glenn Hubbard of Columbia, Greg Mankiw of Harvard, former Senator Jim Talent and Vin Weber, a former congressman. This is the gold standard of adviser teams.
He could probably work well with the leaders of his own party. If Romney were to be elected, he would probably share power with the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and the House speaker, John Boehner. These are not exactly Tea Party radicals. Instead, they are consummate professionals and expert legislators who could plausibly work together. More presidents have been undone by the Congressional leaders in their own party than by members of the opposition.
Romney may be able to guard against ideological overreach. Each successive recent administration has overread its election mandate. Romney may be inauthentic, but he is rarely overzealous.
He comes from a blue state. Candidates who come from states where their party is in the minority are much more likely to be elected. In government, it really helps to have a feel for how people in the other party think. Neither President Obama nor George W. Bush had this.
Finally, Romney can be dull. Political activists like exciting candidates. But most people, who have lower expectations from politics and politicians, just want them to provide basic order. They want government to be orderly so they can be daring in other spheres of their lives. Romney is the most predictable of the candidates and would make for the most soporific of presidents. That’s a good thing. Government would function better if partisan passions were on a lower flame.
It’s exciting to have charismatic leaders. But often the best leaders in business, in government and in life are not glittering saviors. They are professionals you hire to get a job done.
The strongest case for Romney is that he’s nobody’s idea of a savior.
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/opinion/brooks-in-defense-of-romney.html?_r=1
