FORMER Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the closest to being a frontrunner in a wide-open Republican field, took a major step toward a second White House candidacy Monday, formally announcing a campaign exploratory committee.
Romney declared that “with able leadership, America’s best days are still ahead,” vigorously implying that U.S. President Barack Obama had failed to provide it.
The Republican, who has been plotting a comeback since losing the GOP presidential nomination to John McCain three years ago, offered himself as the person best able to lead a country struggling to recover from economic crisis.
“It is time that we put America back on a course of greatness with a growing economy, good jobs and fiscal discipline in Washington,” Romney, a former venture capitalist with a record of turning around failing companies, said in a video posted on his Web site and on Facebook. He also announced the formation of the committee, which will allow him to raise money, in a Twitter message.
Romney’s move had been expected and a full-fledged campaign is a near certainty. He has traveled across the country to meet in private with donors and sound out their support. His political committee’s headquarters near Boston has been bulking up. And in his few public appearances, he has honed his criticism of Obama.
Romney’s strengths are substantial: He’s well-known and he’s an experienced campaigner. He has a personal fortune and an existing network of donors. He has a successful businessman’s record.
But his challenges are big, too. They include a record of changing positions on social issues including abortion and gay rights, shifts that have left conservatives questioning his sincerity. He also has struggled to allay some skepticism of his Mormon faith.
Romney oversaw a health care law enacted in Massachusetts that’s similar to Obama’s national health overhaul, which conservatives despise. His announcement video didn’t mention either law.
He invested more than US$40 million of his own money in the 2008 race and counted on early wins in Iowa and New Hampshire that never materialized. He tried to run to the right of the pack but couldn’t persuade enough GOP primary voters.
Romney hammered Obama’s stewardship of the economy and offered a preview of his expected campaign theme: He is a proven business executive while Obama remains unqualified to repair a fractured economy.
“President Obama’s policies have failed. He and virtually all the people around him have never worked in the real economy. They just don’t know how jobs are created in the private sector.”
Then Romney makes the case for himself.
“From my vantage point in business and in government, I have become convinced that America has been put on a dangerous course by Washington politicians, and it has become even worse during the last two years,” he said. “But I am also convinced that with able leadership, America’s best days are still ahead.”
The fiscal conservative has the looks and clean-cut image of a 1950s matinee idol. He and wife Ann have been married since 1969, and have five sons and 16 grandchildren.
Romney, the son of a former governor of Michigan, met his future wife when he was 18 and she was 15, just before he departed for college and then more than two years of Mormon missionary work in France.
While heading Bain Capital, he helped launch the Staples office supply chain, as well as buy Domino’s Pizza.
To bolster his image as a job creator, Romney, 64, said in his video that Bain Capital started with just 10 employees and grew to hundreds of workers.
His public career began in 1999, when he was recruited to take over the 2002 Winter Olympics after scandal and financial deficits threatened the Salt Lake City games.
In 2003, he took over as governor of Massachusetts after a campaign in which he cast himself as a moderate on abortion, gay rights and stem cell research. He had sounded many of the same themes during an unsuccessful 1994 U.S. Senate race against Democrat Edward M. Kennedy.
He chose not to seek a second term and instead turned his sights to the White House.
Although Romney is promoting his private-sector business experience to show he could do better than Obama in creating jobs, opponents will find fault in his record as a corporate raider in the 1980s and as Massachusetts governor when his performance on employment was mixed at best.
He made a fortune wheeling and dealing in companies, some of which endured big job cuts as part of restructuring. Some ultimately went bankrupt.
“He was a corporate raider who often made companies profitable, not by helping them perform better — but by simply laying off employees and killing jobs,” said Ray Buckley, Democratic Party chairman of New Hampshire.
Bain Capital, which Romney headed for more than a decade, specialized in leveraged buyouts: buying companies with money borrowed against their assets, grooming them to be sold off, and in the interim collecting huge management fees.
Later, as Massachusetts governor from January 2003 to January 2007, Romney presided over one of the puniest rates of employment growth among the 50 U.S. states, at a time the nation’s economy was booming.
Labor Department figures showed Massachusetts ranked 47th among the states in the rate of jobs growth in those four years — ahead of only Ohio, Michigan and Louisiana.
The Democratic party will attempt to pick holes in Romney’s jobs record if he wins the Republican nomination, a party strategist said.
Romney is an early frontrunner to win the nomination and some polls even show him ahead of Obama in states such as Florida, Georgia and New Hampshire. He has high name recognition and a powerful fund-raising machine.
“Romney would be Obama’s toughest challenge. Romney looks presidential — teeth gleaming white, jaw perfectly sculpted,” Robert Reich, labor secretary under President Bill Clinton, said of Romney.
In a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll last week, Romney came out on top, supported by 21 percent in a nine-candidate field.
Many voters also warm up to Romney’s unbridled optimism about the United States.
The title of his 2009 book/policy manifesto, “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness” (the subtitle was revised to “Believe in America” for the paperback edition) was in part a dig at Obama’s habit of showing humility on the world stage.
(SD-Agencies)
