The Man Who Wants

...One more thing...

...Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution says his “hunch” is that the business sector is “a very bad place” for picking up what’s required to be an effective president...

...That’s what you expect...

...He set up a “war room” in a hotel and devised a fi vepart plan...

...Not in Washington anyway—Romney understands this...

...As governor of Massachusetts, Romney balked at extending Boston’s mass transit system until he’d heard the case against it...

...Romney is not primarily a politician...

...Just as you would in the world of business...

...The fi rm was drowning in debt and on the verge of collapse...

...Sometimes it does...

...The last thing you want is people coming in saying ‘We all agree...

...He boasts of traveling to 40 countries as a Bain executive, but that’s hardly preparation for guiding a nation’s relationship with other countries and for serving as commander in chief...

...In formulating foreign policy, Romney says he favors the same freewheeling debate that he relishes in discussions on domestic policy...

...is heavy on business and relatively light on politics, the political community, the press, and presidential scholars are dubious of his qualifi cations for the presidency...

...Only one partner left...

...While Romney is conservative, his approach to governing is not ideological...

...The viciously partisan Democrats who control Congress wouldn’t be so complaisant...

...In the private sector if all you do is talk, you get fi red...

...Now, the overriding question about Romney is whether his approach would work in a Washington bitterly divided along partisan and ideological lines...

...I had passed the young and irresponsible stage,” Romney told me...

...You listen to alternative viewpoints...

...Given his background, Romney is a special case...

...They blanketed the city with 250,000 fl yers with the girl’s picture and organized a media campaign...

...Instead Romney publicly said that Ahmadinejad should be disinvited from addressing the U.N.’s general assembly and from appearing at Columbia University...

...Unlike everyone else running for president, though, Romney has a new method for solving problems and taking on diffi cult issues...

...Gay didn’t ask for help in fi nding her, but he got it anyway...

...The second example occurred on Romney’s trip to Israel last January...

...Romney has a knack for persuading smart people to leave lucrative jobs to work for him for less pay...

...Bill Bain, my old boss, used to joke that most things can be fi xed, but smart—or dumb—is forever...

...Romney weighed alternatives before adopting the early primary strategy of concentrating on the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire on the assumption that he must win one or both of them to spur his candidacy and win the nomination...

...Several advisers recommended he urge the State Department to deny Ahmadinejad a visa, but it emerged in the analysis-anddebate session that this would be illegal...

...Nor did they become friends...

...That must change, he says...

...That’s it...

...We disagree on almost all issues . . . but we were able to collaborate on the health care solution in a way that will be a step forward...

...Romney asked the number of terrorist attacks before and after the fence was erected...

...Five years earlier, Romney had been summoned from Bain Capital to lead a turnaround of the company which had created Bain Capital as a spin-off and where Romney had worked for six years, Bain Consulting...

...I’m not so sure...

...He arranged to visit the fence along the West Bank and was surprised by the reluctance of Israeli military offi cers to defend the building of the barrier...

...And he’s used it to fashion a blueprint for his presidential campaign...

...A businessman who has dealt with both Romney and Bush, and admires both of them, says Romney “has internalized” what he learned at Harvard— particularly the value of debate and dissent—“but Bush hasn’t...

...In this regard, he suggests he’d be a bit like Bush...

...The turnaround took nearly two years and worked because Romney persuaded Bain Consulting’s partners to commit to staying...

...This, in effect, is Romney’s presidential position...

...Two episodes when Romney ran Bain Capital are striking...

...It’s an important distinction...

...Ross Perot made a similar claim when he ran for president in 1992 and 1996...

...Romney would be coolly analytical and less political...

...More to the point, Hoover failed as president...

...Here’s how Romney describes the process: You diagnose the problem...

...The most frequent answer I get is that Washington is so driven by who has power and the stakes of having power or not having it are so huge that people have ignored the interest of the country and placed the interest of their party’s power ahead of it...

...Sure, it’s a process that was developed outside of government, but Romney honed it in the cutthroat world of business consulting and corporate turnarounds, compared to which the fi ghting in Washington is tame...

...Romney took from his Harvard years a way of thinking and making decisions that he has applied relentlessly through two decades as a business executive, three as CEO and savior of the 2002 Winter Olympics, four as governor of Massachusetts, and now for a year as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination...

...Why is it Washington cannot...

...His idea of the perfect deal is not when one side wins but when “you fi nd a new alternative that everybody agrees is the right way to go...

...I mean, great...

...You put the right team together to solve the problem...

...Romney is quite normal...

...At the end of the process, the leader makes a decision that may or may not coincide with the “vision” or “concept” or “framework”— Romney’s words—that initiated the discussion in the fi rst place...

...But Perot was an oddball who never would have gotten his way in Washington...

...And because his r?sum...

...He’s stuck to that strategy...

...He still slips into business consultant lingo, talking (at least to me) about “the breakthrough insight” and a person’s “skill set” and “the selection, motivation, and guidance of people...

...It’s time to have some people put the country fi rst, and I think there are Democrats as well as Republicans who will do that...

...He’s a successful corporate executive with a second career in politics—a second career similar to Ronald Reagan’s...

...Here’s the recommendation.’ I know I don’t want to proceed on that basis...

...Besides rigorous analysis, he says he’d bring the “can do” spirit of the business community to a Romney presidency...

...And I did a lot better than that...

...But these skills didn’t become central to his political career, much less his presidency...

...Romney, an aide says, is “a before and after guy” in making judgments...

...If elected president, Romney intends to apply this approach in Washington...

...It wasn’t...

...Romney thinks so—no surprise there—and he cites as evidence his success in working with Democrats in Massachusetts...

...When President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran visited New York in September, Romney wanted to take a strong stand, but he found in discussion with advisers that his options were limited...

...Mitt Romney resurrected the consulting company’s fi nances and then returned to his enormously successful and profi table Bain Capital,” writes Hugh Hewitt, the talk radio host, in his book about Romney, A Mormon in the White House...

...If they’d fl ed, the fi rm would have crumpled...

...Romney applied the same approach he used to revitalize other companies, stressing analysis and data...

...Romney had gone to Brigham Young University in Utah...

...The Man Who Wants Mitt Romney thinks the skills he acquired in the cutthroat world of corporate turnarounds will make him a good president BY FRED BARNES Mitt Romney and George W. Bush both graduated from Harvard Business School in 1975...

...Governors who become president—Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush—invariably think what worked for them at the state level will work in Washington...

...Twenty hours later, a New Jersey family heard of the dragnet, called the police, and reported Melissa was safe with them...

...A professor who taught Bush remembers him as a mediocre student who rarely participated in the giveandtake of class discussions...

...And this has alarmed several conservatives who have met with Romney...

...Once he had, he decided to approve the extension...

...That doesn’t always happen...

...As a presidential candidate, Romney has sought to take the same position on foreign affairs he would if he were president...

...We did attend one class together,” Romney recalls, “but I must admit that we didn’t hang out together or do things...

...I had a home and a mortgage...

...If there’s a gap (and there has been), it would be fi lled by Romney’s personal funds...

...Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...Mission accomplished...

...It consists of attacking a problem or considering an issue or policy through vigorous debate, with dissenting opinions encouraged and outside advice eagerly sought, and relying on as much hard data as possible...

...If the United States had faced the same terrorist threat, “we’d have built it 10 feet higher and called it a wall...

...The Romney way is very simple...

...That optimism has a familiar ring...

...Carter touted zero-based budgeting as an effective tool in controlling spending...

...If you don’t have that, the danger is that you miss risks and opportunities that you otherwise would fi nd...

...Business and government are different,” he told me...

...This amounts to a full-scale frisk to fi nd what doesn’t work and what can be streamlined...

...You typically also have processes in place to see if it’s working or not working, and you make adjustments from time to time...

...In July 1996, a Bain managing director, Robert Gay, quietly informed Romney that his 14-year-old daughter Melissa had been missing for several days in New York City after attending a rock concert...

...The result of this process is, you hope, that you make better decisions...

...In Massachusetts my political and philosophical adversary has been Ted Kennedy...

...I remember reading these stories that there are arguments in the Bush administration and Colin Powell thinks one thing and Condoleezza Rice another...

...A legitimate worry about Romney is his lack of experience in foreign policy...

...Romney has one of those, too...

...Romney isn’t unique in insisting the skills he developed as a business consultant and CEO would be useful in Washington...

...You insist on gathering data before you make decisions and analyze the data looking for trends...

...For Romney, Washington is a large turnaround project that he’s impatient to take on...

...Why is this a story...

...Bringing together the right people who have differing viewpoints and perspectives and welcoming those differences”—that’s his goal, he told me...

...Romney’s experience has been in long-term crisis management...

...No president has had his long experience in the corporate world...

...The president is required by law to allow foreign leaders to attend meetings at the United Nations in New York...

...Romney had a different Harvard experience...

...Romney used this method of analysis and decisionmaking for six years with Bain Consulting in Boston, where his task was reviving failing companies...

...I went at it with a lot of energy...

...He was married with two kids...

...Do Hillary Clinton or John Edwards or Fred Thompson or John McCain have anything better to offer...

...He may not be ideological, but Nancy Pelosi certainly will be...

...I ask people why Washington is so broken,” Romney told me: State after state is able to balance their budget every year, solve tough problems from time to time, fi x their schools, fi x their roads...

...But by treating every issue as a problem to be solved, I suspect Romney could make headway on domestic policy, even on divisive issues like Social Security, health care, and immigration...

...I have spent a lifetime getting things done,” he told a crowd in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, recently...

...They were happy to share credit with the governor...

...At Harvard, he fi nished in the top 5 percent of his class and was named a Baker Scholar, a prestigious academic honor...

...He’s super-pragmatic,” says an adviser...

...Sometimes it doesn’t...

...Romney believes getting the right people on your team is crucial...

...All they have are agendas...

...The implication, of course, is that all Washington does is talk...

...He’s an eclectic conservative...

...Romney is extremely smart, confi - dent as a decision maker, and adept at fi nding grounds for agreement...

...Romney emphasized it while keeping the scandalplagued 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah from collapsing and later in putting together a health insurance plan for Massachusetts that covered all the state’s uninsured and got the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature and Senator Ted Kennedy to sign on...

...I was also convinced that because I’d not come from one of these famous Eastern schools I’d probably fl unk out...

...I like smart people,” he wrote in Turnaround, his chronicle of saving the Winter Olympics...

...And he should be indicted under the U.N.’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide for advocating the destruction of Israel...

...Foreign and national security policy wouldn’t be as amenable to the Romney scenario of debate and compromise...

...He used it again for 15 years when he headed Bain Capital, which specialized in investing in start-ups and late-stage turnarounds...

...Nor would crisis management of the urgent and perilous kind a president is expected to handle...

...Herbert Hoover once ran a mining company but he was essentially an engineer...

...He would subject the entire federal bureaucracy, agency by agency, department by department, to a “strategic audit...

...To Fix Washington His presidential style, as a result, would be far different from President Bush’s—or any other president’s...

...Romney shut down the Bain offi ce in Boston and took most of its 30 employees to Manhattan to search for the girl...

...When told attacks had dropped to zero, Romney said the Israelis shouldn’t be apologetic about the fence...

...Romney decided how much money his campaign needs to spend rather than how much it must raise...

...Romney loves the give-and-take...

...Bush tends to follow his political instincts and rely on gut feelings in making decisions...

...I have to see confl ict,” he says...

...He kept saying he’s a problem solver,” says an economic adviser who believes this would put Romney at a disadvantage in Washington...

...They get the job done...

...Reagan’s ability to attract Democratic support did...

...Bush earned an MBA and later wrote that Harvard “gave me the tools and vocabulary of the business world...

...You want that kind of debate...

...Bush was single and fresh from fi ve years in the Texas Air National Guard...

...Dividing the city into sectors, Romney and his partners enlisted 250 people from fi rms they’d worked with in New York, mostly on Wall Street, to join the search...

...Two examples...