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发帖数: 29846 | 1 By NEIL KING JR.
More than half a year after his election loss, Mitt Romney is putting a
tentative foot back onto the public stage.
Restless, a little wistful and sharply critical of President Barack Obama's
second term, Mr. Romney said in an interview that he plans to re-emerge in
ways that will "help shape national priorities."
As a first step, the former Republican presidential nominee plans to welcome
200 friends and supporters to a three-day summit next week that he will
host at a Utah mountain resort.
He is considering writing a book and a series of opinion pieces, and has
plans to campaign for 2014 candidates. But he is wary of overdoing it. "I'm
not going to be bothering the airwaves with a constant series of speeches,"
he told The Wall Street Journal, speaking from his home in La Jolla, Calif.
The Utah event, six months in the making, will be splashy, expensive and
closed to outsiders and the press. The meeting will be "forward looking," as
Mr. Romney describes it, but also nostalgic for a race that slipped away.
.
Mr. Romney said he sees the session as a chance "to exchange views and
update our thinking about where the world is headed and what the national
agenda ought to be." For now, he is thinking in broad strokes, ticking off
global youth unemployment, U.S. competitiveness and declining family
structures as interests.
The former governor has made only a smattering of public appearances since
his concession in the wee hours of Nov. 7. He spoke at a conservative summit
in March and sat down with Jay Leno on "The Tonight Show" earlier this
month. His main occupations now, he says, are dispensing business advice to
his four sons and doing charitable work for a group offering health care to
poor children overseas.
As for the fate of a Republican Party left bruised by his defeat, Mr. Romney
offered a few tidbits and regrets, saying that the GOP needs "to translate
our message in a way that minorities understand," and that he wished his
campaign had poured more money into ads targeting Hispanic voters. He said a
recent self-assessment by the national GOP, which faulted its outreach to
minorities and women, "was in large part correct."
But Mr. Romney was cautious in offering his party guidance: "Having lost the
election, I don't look at myself as the person best equipped to prescribe
where the party should go, going forward," he said.
Mr. Romney played down the controversies that have swirled around the White
House this month, saying he was "more disappointed" by the "lack of any
clear White House agenda in the first 100 days."
"The extraordinary disappointment of the president's second term is where
the opportunity was greatest, he has proposed the least," he said. "He
continues to campaign as if there is another election, and there isn't." The
White House declined to comment.
At the same time, Mr. Romney described in detail, as though he had consulted
the calendar as the days whizzed by, the thwarted plans he had laid for his
own first 100 days as president—the schedule of "legislation filed,
regulations rewritten, executive orders rewritten"—aimed at boosting the
economy and unwinding Obama administration policies.
Next week's "Experts and Enthusiasts" retreat, as he calls it, is the first
event since the election that Mr. Romney has orchestrated himself. He views
it as a last chance to gather his supporters and advisers together "before
we all go off in different directions," he said.
Dreamed up during a discussion in December with two of his top campaign
aides, Beth Myers and Spencer Zwick, it is also a reprise of a notable donor
gathering that Mr. Romney hosted during his time as nominee-in-waiting in
the same venue last June, except with a few twists.
Last year's assembly in Park City, just east of Salt Lake City, mixed top
financial backers, such as New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, with big GOP
policy figures, such as Condoleezza Rice. This year's summit, which isn't a
fundraiser but carries a $5,000-a-couple entry fee, will feature many of the
same donors but with a sprinkling of Democrats, including Colorado Gov.
John Hickenlooper and former Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod.
Three potential 2016 Republican contenders are flying in to speak: Sen. Rand
Paul of Kentucky, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and New Jersey Gov. Chris
Christie.
Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles will address challenges surrounding the
national debt. Former Sun Microsystems Chief Executive Scott McNealy will
tout his free, online teaching venture, Curriki. Mr. Axelrod and his wife,
Susan, will tell of their daughter's struggles with severe epilepsy and talk
up their support for finding a cure.
"I'll confess I was a bit surprised when they invited me," said Mr. Axelrod,
noting that he has never met the man he helped defeat last year. "But this
was an invitation extended in good faith, recognizing that the things that
unite us are bigger than what divides us."
Others on the attendee list include Andrew Pozder, chief executive of CKE
Restaurants; Andrew Cherng, founder of the Panda Express restaurant chain;
Netscape founder Marc Andreessen and former Goldman SachsGS +0.91% executive
Edward Forst.
The retreat will offer some unusual extracurriculars: Skeet shooting with Mr
. Ryan; golfing with Mr. Paul; horseback riding with Mitt and Ann Romney;
hiking with Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman.
Still working on his speech, Mr. Romney said he plans to elaborate on what
he considers the emerging threats "to U.S. freedom and prosperity." Some,
such as the decline of U.S. competitiveness and the rise of China, will be
familiar to anyone who followed the campaign. Others, like the world's
growing dependence on oil and fossil fuels, weren't a focus of Mr. Romney's
presidential platform.
"This whole thing is classic Mitt," said Mr. McNealy, a long-time supporter,
recalling other quirky brainstorming sessions he attended when Mr. Romney
was running Bain Capital.
Like many flying to Utah, Mr. McNealy said he hasn't seen Mr. Romney since
the election, "but I can tell you he's not off sulking or bitter at all."
Mr. Romney has clearly given plenty of thought to his next steps. Mr. Romney
ticks off the list, going back decades, of defeated major-party nominees
who have preceded him. "You can go back a long, long way: McGovern, Dukakis,
Dole, Kerry, McCain," he said.
Some returned to public office, others didn't. "But by and large," he said,
those who lost "aren't very much in the public view."
Then he added, "But it doesn't have to be that way." | T*********I
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