Table of Contents
FOR MY FAMILY
Introduction
At about 9:20, the telephone rang in the hall. Dean Acheson was calling from his country house in Maryland.
Mr. President, he said, I have very serious news. The North Koreans have invaded South Korea.
FROM Truman, BY DAVID MCCULLOUGH
It is with evenings like that one of June 24, 1950, in mind that Americans ought to cast their primary and general election votes for presidents. When devastating surprises arrive, whether on December 7, 1941, September 11, 2001, or any such future dayand there will be manyour countrys survival depends upon the man or woman in the Oval Office.
The first duty of American conservatives is to use their talents, time, and treasure to conserve America. And not just any sort of America, but one in which all men and women are understood to have been created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, rights which are best protected through the institutions created by the Constitution and operated under that Constitutions design of mediated majoritarianism.
Conservatives understand the value of life, including the life of the unborn; the deep and enduring benefits of freedom of religion and of the press; the absolute necessity of the right to hold property free of excessive governmental intrusion; the joy, efficiency, and breathtaking productivity of free markets and free minds; the necessity of an uncorrupt judiciary fairly dealing out justice under a rule of law and the dangers of unelected judges asserting for themselves roles and claiming for themselves powers outside their constitutional duties.
Conservatives also understand clearly the war in which the West finds itself. Serious conservatives know as well that the war can be lost and the world engulfed in a barbaric darkness, one suddenly brought about through the release of the awful powers of nuclear weaponry or through contagions manufactured for the purpose of spreading disease and death.
Conservatives are deeply uneasy as the nation moves toward the end of the Bush presidency. We know that there is not a single serious contender for the Democratic nomination who has evidenced anything resembling seriousness about the war. A Democratic Congress cannot lose the war although it will make victory much more difficult. But a Democratic president can indeed lose the war and unleash through weakness, incompetence, and blindness awful forces as Jimmy Carter did when he failed to prevent the installation of a revolutionary Islamic Republic in Iran, and as Bill Clinton did when he did not move decisively against the nuclear ambitions of North Korea or the menace of an al Qaeda nested in a barbaric, Taliban-led Afghanistan.
Many conservatives do not see a standard-bearer in the field, or at least one with a prayer of success.
Senator John McCain is a nationalist, and a man of unquestioned courage and resolve with regard to the war. He reminds many of Douglas MacArthur. But he is no conservative.
Senator McCain allowed his fear of money to trump his faith in free speech, and sacrificed the latter in avainredesign of the First Amendment via the McCain-Feingold campaign finance fiasco.
Senator McCain later chose the rituals and privileges of the Senate and his love for the spotlight over the Constitutions clear design when it came to the nomination and confirmation of judges. His Gang of 14 backroom deal undercut the vast majority of his GOP colleagues, his president, and his party, and did not even in its second year of operation gain for judicial nominees the up-or-down floor votes promised them.
Senator McCain also chose to trust Senator Kennedy and not his own party on the issue of border security. Then, as the elections of 2006 approached, he engaged in a dramatic demand that the Supreme Court-mandated and Bush administration-designed law governing the trials and treatment of War on Terror detainees be redone according to his own vision of the good. It was a train wreck-causing public relations stunt that led to cosmetic changes in the law and the loss of crucial legislative weeks. With those lost weeks came the loss of crucial legislation and nominations, and quite likely many seats in both the House and Senate.
Conservatives do not trust Senator McCain. It is difficult to believe that even the best campaign by him will erase that distrust.
Conservatives admire Rudy Giuliani, the mayor who strode towards the Towers, and whose reputation for toughness and clear-eyed understanding of the enemy is the equal of McCains.
But Mayor Giuliani will not change his long-held views on abortion rights, including partial birth abortionhe believes in Roe v. Wade and its even more extreme progeny. Like Senator McCain, Mayor Giuliani is simply not upset by the assault on marriage by arrogant judges. For many conservatives, Rudy Giuliani would make a superb Secretary of Defense. But president?
Floridas Jeb Bush is sidelined by his name, even though in any other year he might be the one conservative who could rally the party. But not this year when everyone knows the GOP nominee must in many ways be the anti-Bush: not from Texas, not given to malapropisms, not a late bloomer, not connected to the perceived mismanagement of post-Saddam Iraq, and definitely not named Bush.
Enter Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, former leader of the Salt Lake City Olympics, a billionaire venture capitalist who blazed his way through Harvards Business and Law Schools and then built a reputation as one of the countrys most brilliant and successful entrepreneurs. The eloquent, funny, self-deprecating father of five sons and grandfather to ten grandchildren has been married to Ann Romney for more than three and a half decades. He is pro-life, pro-marriage, and pro-Second Amendment. He understands economic growth and the world economy as only wildly successful international businessmen do.
Romney grew up in politics with a father who was a three-term governor of Michigan (and a one time front-runner for the 1968 GOP presidential nomination), and later a member of Richard Nixons cabinet.
And Romney knows the war. He has worked to learn its complexities and the nature of our diverse enemies, constantly reading the sorts of books that must be absorbed. He has made journeys to places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Beijing, Tokyo, and the border between the Koreas to gather the sorts of facts that cannot be found in books. When Irans former presidenta terrorist himself complicit in a regime devoted to terrorismwas inexplicably granted a visa to the United States and extended an invitation to Harvard, Romney denounced both decisions and refused him the courtesies normally extended the former leaders of foreign countries.
The preceding suggests what has long been known to Americas political obsessives: Mitt Romney is unique. He has a talent for politics and leadership that is extraordinary amongst the ranks of professional politicians. Whats more, his record of accomplishment in both the private and public spheres is remarkable. If Mitt Romneys personal characteristics and record of achievement didnt clearly qualify him for the presidency, there would be no discussion about his faith. But he is a serious candidate for president; a very serious candidate.
Indeed, it is no wonder that Romney had the best 2006 of all the Republicans. He was the best prepared. In a year that destroyed first the ambitions of George Allen and then those of Bill Frist, Romney soared in the speculations of the political class as he raised more money for the GOP than John McCain and Rudy Giuliani combined. When the James Baker-led Iraq Study Group issued its report urging engagement with Iran and Syria, Romneyas did McCainrejected the idea as the absurd neoappeasement it was. The
