Romney Goes on Tour

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is following the classic playbook for politicians who aspire to be president: Write a book, give speeches, and campaign for your party’s candidates in the midterm election.

Unlike Sarah Palin, you won’t see this Republican flirt with the idea of appearing on a reality show on television. He’s a serious man with a serious agenda.

That has its downside, of course. As the moderator for the Q&A portion of Romney’s Press Club appearance noted, Palin’s appearance on Jay Leno’s return to The Tonight Show attracted far more viewers than Romney’s appearance on David Letterman’s show.

Romney laughed, then quipped, “I’ve got to get better material.”

Today his material was a well-crafted speech and thoughtful answers to the questions posed by the audience. That should be a compliment, but Romney lacks the quality that makes Palin so fascinating the watch: the expectation that any minute, this train could run off the rails.

Plus, Romney has a sense of responsibility. He declined to characterize President Barack Obama’s policies as socialism, for example.

“I try to avoid highly incendiary words,” he said.

How is he going to get elected with that kind of attitude?

Romney’s critique of Obama is worth paying attention to, however. The points he made today are likely to be made by whoever Obama faces in 2012, whether it’s Romney, Palin, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, or some other Republican.

Let’s start with economic policy. Romney knows something about entrepreneurship, having made a fortune through the private equity firm he co-founded. He contends Washington “is slowly but surely stripping away that spirit of innovation and creativity and personal freedom” that made America unique.

He accused Obama of pursuing the “most anti-investment, anti-entrepreneur” agenda of any president since Jimmy Carter.

“You don’t attack job creators if you want to create jobs,” Romney said.

Romney said the president’s first priority should have been getting the economy growing again. One of the first rules you learn in the business world, he noted, is “when you have an enterprise in trouble…concentrate on the very most important element first with all your energy and passion.”

But instead of focusing on the economy, Obama spent too much of his energy and political capital on health care reform, Romney said. That’s an important topic, he said, but should have been a lower priority given the deep recession the nation was in.

Plus, Romney thinks health care reform should be done on the state level, like Massachusetts did when he was governor.

“I like the way we dealt with it, by the way,” he said, even though he regretted the state legislature overrode his veto of a tax imposed on businesses that don’t provide health insurance.

The Massachusetts reforms got more people covered by insurance, but controlling health care costs will require changing the incentives for doctors, hospitals, and other providers, and making Americans better consumers of health care, he said.

He criticized Obama for attacking insurance companies, as if they’re “the reason health care is expensive in America.”

“Our health care problems are a lot broader than insurance companies,” Romney said.

That’s true, but Democrats bet that bashing insurance companies is good politics. Romney’s defense of insurance companies drew a quick rebuke from the Democratic National Committee today.

“These are the same insurance companies who are hiking rates on American families and small businesses by 40 percent and denying care to Americans when they need it most,” the DNC stated in a press release. “It’s becoming crystal clear whose side Mitt Romney is on…and it’s not yours (unless, of course, you are an insurance company or a Wall Street bank.)”

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Kent Hoover is the Washington bureau chief for bizjournals.