Romney’s 2012 Blueprint

Click here for all of David Frum’s blogposts on Mitt Romney’s “No Apology”.

Mitt Romney’s new book, No Apology, makes a very striking contrast with the most recent book entry by a potential Republican presidential candidate, Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue. Palin’s subject is Palin: her wrongs and grievances.

Unlike Palin, Romney cares about the external world. His book is an action plan, not a memoir. It is crammed with factual claims and policy recommendations, with only the lightest sprinkling of self-references. You may have already heard my theory of the two Romneys, Good Romney and Bad Romney. No Apologies is mostly written by Good Romney, but Bad Romney does make himself heard at regular intervals. This dual authorship makes it difficult to write of the book as a whole, not without invoking now-forgotten literary theories of deconstruction and unstable narration.

It’s probably simpler to go page by page …

Good Romney commences unasserted assumption: Americans live in a world defined by competition between great powers. It is the job of the American statesman to ensure that America remains paramount in this competition.

Who are the competitors?

First, the United States and its partners: Canada, Europe, and the other democratic allies, about whom Good Romney has this to say: “Sweden and several other European nations … place a far heavier governmental hand on free enterprise and on economic freedom than does the United States. Citizens are highly taxed to provide not only a very substantial social safety net but also a relatively comfortable lifestyle. Business and employment are highly regulated. Despite the differences among Western nations, economic freedom and political freedom are at the core.” (p. 13)

A refreshing departure from the representation of all non-America as a hellhole of tyranny.

Second, China. Third, Russia (?), of whom Romney has surprisingly respectful things to say. Fourth, Iran and “the jihadists.”

Of these four, only one – the West – is founded upon freedom. The outcome of this great power competition will determine the fate of human freedom in the world. That seems to me exactly right, a serious conclusion, very much in the mainstream of American conservative thinking about foreign policy. American foreign policy should seek the American interest first, with the expansion of human freedom as an expected but indirect benefit.

A couple of things to remark in passing.

On page 19, Romney inserts an inflammatory thought designed to appeal to his harder-core readers. Romney suggests that the jihadists, an uncoordinated movement, operate in many different ways to achieve different kinds of goals. Among these diverging methods: “Some endeavor to mollify and pacify the West, lulling these nations into complacency and inaction. Lebanese American scholar and NBC commentator Walid Phares argues in his book, Future Jihad, that the massive Saudi investment in Islamic study centers in Western universities is designed to do just that.”

Notice that Romney inserts this criticism of the Saudis into somebody else’s mouth. This is something of a pattern in the book: it is carefully structured to preserve disavowability at key points.

Also notice: first (of many!) favorable mention of a corporate CEO: p. 17, Jim Sens of GEN3 Partners.