This Republican primary season has felt a lot like my past four years in college. We voters began our journey bright-eyed dreamers — just ask Bill Kristol or my own Students for Daniels. We fell in love with reckless indiscretion and were left at times with broken hearts. We had a few laughs along the way, made lasting friendships, and learned a bit about ourselves. The often-surreal challenges of the process have left us stronger and ready to take the world by storm.
The time draws near for me to leave those bright college years behind and for our party to step off campus and begin shaping our future. President Obama and his re-election team have promised to be as harsh, unfair, and unrelenting as the real world, and we need a candidate prepared to weather the storm and defeat this failed, unrelenting president. That candidate is Mitt Romney.
I did not always support Governor Romney’s campaign. Having served in leadership positions on Jon Huntsman’s presidential campaign and in the national effort to draft Mitch Daniels, I realize only now that the dust has begun to clear what a quarter of the Republican electorate has known all along: Mitt Romney is the best candidate that the Republicans can nominate to defeat President Obama in 2012.
President Obama’s own re-election team has acknowledged that the president cannot run on any of his “achievements.” Obama’s $800 billion stimulus plan, consisting almost entirely of political paybacks and pork, failed to restart the economy. His trillion-dollar health insurance law, which added heaps of new regulations and taxes to already struggling small businesses, has not won public support since it was introduced in 2009. His campaign promise to end the Bush-era deficits has transformed into an additional $5 trillion in sovereign debt and the three largest budget deficits in American history.
Political commentators on the left and the right have criticized Mitt Romney as unexciting and bland. But that’s just the point. This campaign is not about personality. It’s about failed policies, a failed philosophy, a failed presidency — it’s about basic math.
The complaints against Mitt Romney have nothing to do with his personal history because Mitt Romney does not have a single skeleton in his closet. President Reagan divorced Jane Wyman? Romney’s been married to his high school sweetheart for 42 years. President Bush overcame addiction to drugs and alcohol? Romney doesn’t even drink coffee.
There have only ever been two arguments against nominating Mitt Romney. The first is that he’s become more conservative the longer he’s served in public life. Well, looking around at the remaining candidates in the field, that assertion sounds pretty good. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich has done the opposite — he went from championing conservatism in 1994 to filming television ads with Nancy Pelosi in 2008.
The second argument against Romney is equally astounding. It’s not that he’s unqualified or unpresidential — indeed, it’s that he’s too good. Romney is too successful, too good-looking, too unflappable. President Obama mishandled the economy; Mitt Romney spent 25 years in the private sector. President Obama created historic deficits; Mitt Romney turned a $3 billion deficit into a surplus when he was governor of Massachusetts. President Obama can’t work with Congress; Mitt Romney managed to lower taxes and fix the deficit, despite Democrats controlling 85% of the state legislature.
Fortunately for the Republican Party, these criticisms are correct. Mitt Romney — by whatever combination of willpower, genes, and divine providence — is tailor-made for the Oval Office. He looks, sounds, and acts like a president, and the voters of both Iowa and New Hampshire noticed. Romney can restore the Republican Party and the conservative movement to what they once were: intellectually diverse, “big umbrella” groups, united in their basic respect for personal potential and individual, human dignity.
My classmates elected President Obama when we were freshmen. Obama’s failed policies have left us a $5 trillion bill and no jobs with which to pay it. Mitt Romney can build the broad, focused coalition necessary to defeat President Obama. College has been challenging, and it’s been fun. Now it’s time for the real work to begin.
Michael Knowles is a senior at Yale University. He most recently served as National Youth Co-Chairman of Jon Huntsman’s presidential campaign.