Romney: Send Out the Aides! From David Brooks’ column praising Mitt Romney’s “impressive” and “sophisticated” approach to the budget:
Over the past several months, Romney has been vague on this subject. The general view among the cognoscenti was that he was being cautious and careerist. Why risk angering voters with plans to cut Social Security and Medicare?
But the fact is that you are not a serious presidential candidate in 2012 unless you have a specific method to reform these programs. Medicare costs are devouring the federal budget. The country can’t wait another four years to address this problem.
A few weeks ago, Romney seemed to realize this. He sent out senior policy aides and close advisers to harvest the best entitlement reform ideas from the conservative policy johnnies. The experts were impressed. The Romney campaign operates like a smooth-running White House, with a process to identify the core issues, cull ideas and present options to the candidate. [E.A.]
Let me get this straight: Romney’s been running for president for eight years but he didn’t already know what he wanted to do with entitlements? It was only “a few weeks ago” that he decided to “harvest the best … ideas”? Which he did by sending out “senior policy aides”–as opposed to having selected those aides in the first place because they, too, already knew what to do? And this dramatic, belated Sending Out of Aides of aides is what convinces Brooks (and is supposed to convince us) that Romney is “the serious one”? ….