Governor Romney’s decision

I’m enormously, profoundly, disappointed by Mitt Romney’s decision not to seek the presidency.

I think that he would have been a superb president.  He’s a man of enormous ability, a man of integrity, intelligence, unique business experience, and extraordinary competence.  As I believe I’ve made clear over the years, I believe that the American electorate made a catastrophically bad decision in 2012 — and that some, at least, have belatedly begun to recognize that fact.

That said, I was never particularly thrilled about a third campaign.  And his success, even in gaining the Republican nomination, was far from assured.  He could have ended up looking a bit like the perennial candidate Harold Stassen, or like Theodore Roosevelt, trying somewhat pathetically to get back into the White House one last time.  He might have ended his political career in humiliation.

As it is, I certainly hope that a Republican victor in 2016 will make use of Mr. Romney’s talents in a new presidential administration, perhaps as Secretary of the Treasury or even as Secretary of State.  He would make a good vice presidential candidate, too, on a grown-up and serious ticket that would be the polar opposite of the current regime.  There is even, I suppose, a slight possibility that, with the wide-open Republican field, the party will have no clear nominee by the time of the convention and a Draft Romney movement could arise.  It’s theoretically possible, but hardly likely.

Anyway, it’s a sad day.  And we still have two more years to go of ideological rigidity, executive overreach, managerial incompetence, and foreign policy failure.