The case for a President Romney draws upon a whole host of different factors, and surely the fact that he is the only candidate to have attended Stanford should have some marginal effect. But the reasoning behind why he is the best candidate for the next President of the United States is much deeper than that. Mitt Romney is everything that we have come to expect out of a great President: Conservative, competent, and charismatic.
In a field dominated by people who have not done much, Governor Romney’s life is characterized quite simply: he gets results. When he was at BYU, he graduated at the top of his class and was propelled on to not only simultaneously earn a law and business degree from Harvard, but also finish cum laude and within the top 5% of his class, respectively. Governor Romney went on to a career in business that can only accurately be described as legendary – his work in making companies that we now hold up as grand successes like Staples or Domino’s (certainly popular outlets for our own office supply and dietary needs) has been studied and praised extensively across the board.
Romney also clearly shares our values, having married his high school sweetheart, Ann, with whom he now has five married sons and ten grandchildren. Ann tells people today that Mitt was always encouraging, reminding her from the office that the work that she was doing was for more important than his, because hers was more lasting. In this respect and others, Mitt followed the advice of his father George, the former Republican Governor of Michigan, who advised him to value family above all else, become financially successful, and then enter public service.
In the late 1990s, the projected 2002 Olympics were mired in scandal and sunk in hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. America’s reputation was on the line – and the organizers could think of no better person to come and save the games than Mitt Romney. He came out and made them not only the most successful Winter Games in history, but cleaned up their image and managed a vastly successful security effort after 9/11.
After that, Romney ran for Governor of Massachusetts, then mired in $3 billion of debt. Despite being one of only two statewide Republican officials, with a completely Democrat delegation to Congress and 86% Democrat legislature, Romney seized control, slashing debt and returning Massachusetts to a surplus. For anyone else, this might have been enough – but Romney did more. While other people talked and dithered, he came up with a private sector based plan for providing everyone healthcare, cut taxes, fought judges who sought to redefine marriage, aggressively vetoed earmarks and other legislation hostile to human life.
In the ultimate assessment, Governor Romney is a man who not only shares our values, but gets the kind of results that we want and need. No other candidate has what he has: an impeccable record of accomplishment with a grand vision of the future.