LET MITT BE MITT - Romney can win on his own talents

(Carl Cannon-PoliticsDaily)..Mitt Romney is running for president of the United States, again. The former Massachusetts governor doesn't say it quite that way. He merely states that he won't "close that door," adding that he isn't yet ready to walk through it, either. But there's only one plausible reason why a wealthy and happy family guy -- and Romney is both -- would undertake all the speeches, interviews, and fundraising for fellow Republicans that Romney is doing. He has unfinished business in politics. To put it bluntly, Mitt Romney does not want to follow in the footsteps of his father, George Romney, another governor-turned-unsuccessful presidential candidate. He wants to be the incarnation of Ronald Reagan.

Just this weekend, Romney appeared at the GOP state convention in Richmond, VA, made a Sunday morning appearance on Fox News, and gave a dozen interviews on the Sonia Sotomayor nomination in which he urged Republicans to show respect and civility. And on Monday, he delivered the keynote address for this month's edition of The Heritage Foundation's "Leadership for America" lecture series.

Foreign policy was the actual subject of Romney's address at the Navy Memorial. He delivered a workmanlike explication of America's military rivals in the world, ranging from China to the worldwide network of jihadists and terrorists, while maintaining that spending 3 percent of America's gross domestic product on military defense, which seems to be where President Obama and the Democratic Congress are heading, is too little. Romney singled out missile defense, an idea first proposed by President Reagan in 1983.

That is a point well taken -- or, at least, it should be. So what are we to make of the 2009 version of Mitt Romney? For starters, he looks and sounds exactly like the old version. He's still eerily handsome, poised, and well-groomed, if a bit robotic.

And yet, his Monday speech, like his entire 2008 campaign, was peppered with Reagan references. Most of these were appropriate enough, as when he quoted Reagan as noting that of the four wars involving the United States in his lifetime, "none happened because America was too strong." It's a line Romney has used for three years now, but Reagan wouldn't have minded: The Gipper was fond of repetition, too. And Romney's clear-eyed, but not wild-eyed, view of the dangers lurking in the world is certainly reminiscent of Reagan.

Unlike Romney, however, Reagan was a long-time national figure who, by the time he was elected president, was the unquestioned leader of the conservative movement. Reagan did not pattern himself after anyone else, Reagan waited for national public opinion to catch up with him, which it finally did in 1980.

As president, the secret to Reagan's success wasn't his consistency; it was his practicality. This was a lesson lost to Reagan's critics as well as his loyalists. In his own White House, the battle cry of conservative purists was "Let Reagan be Reagan." This slogan had the unintended effect of underestimating Reagan's talent, and what it came to symbolize has been the downfall of more than one would-be Reagan imitator. In 2008, Mitt Romney, was one of those candidates who fell into the trap of trying to emulate Reagan rather than rely on his own (considerable) talents.

Obviously, running a nationwide campaign in 2008, Romney had to modulate this kind of rhetoric. But in trying to remake himself into a Reagan clone, Romney went too far -- so far that he hurt his own campaign.

But Ronald Reagan got another chance, and it looks like Romney will, too. There is an obvious rationale to his candidacy now that was lacking in 2007 and 2008. I'm referring to the sorry state of the U.S. economy, and the Democrats' notion that we can simply borrow our way to prosperity. Romney's rich experience as a successful businessman who turned companies around, rescued the 2002 Olympics, and made the Commonwealth of Massachusetts solvent, and yes, brought his state universal health insurance, would suit him well in this environment. If he'd talk about it. And so, with all due respect to the remaining Reaganauts out there, I have a modest proposal to make with respect to Romney's handlers, speechwriters, and campaign ad guys in 2012:
Let Mitt be Mitt.