Letter 2 America for November 9, 2012

Dear America,

More has come out of the election than just a continuation of the status quo.  We still have the same president, for which I am thankful as I was dreading the alternative, and we still have the same array of power in the federal legislature.  But in addition, Mitt Romney may have been given the chance to do something meaningful at last.  He will never be president, but if he seizes this opportunity he might do something just as noteworthy.  He can now either move off the political scene and be the grandfather that he also wants to be, or he can assume the mantle of dean of the Republican Party, which he is both entitled to and now, ironically, qualified for.  Romney can become what Bill Clinton is, not just to his party but to the nation; Mitt Romney is now the closest thing that the Republican Party has to an elder, and beloved statesman.

In the wake of his defeat however, Mitt Romney has two impediments to his immortality in front of him: first, will he decide to assume the role for which I think he was destined all along, and second, is the Republican Party collectively smart enough to see him waiting in the wings and draft him into their service and that of the nation.  The latter is no sure thing, just as I didn't see Romney's higher potential either...not until he gave his concession speech.  He is ambitious by nature, but not devious, as I had come to believe him to be based on the campaign he ran...especially in the end with the less than half truths of, for example, his ads about moving Jeep manufacture to China.  And if the Republicans can overlook Romney's lack of a conniving nature, they have a chance to redeem the party name, and perhaps the party itself.  They have demonstrated a preference for prevaricators, but if they can give the truth a second look, Mitt Romney might be just the face they need to project, assuming he clings to his higher nature rather than returning to pandering to the casuistic Republican base.  Only they could give him the nomination, but once they did, there was no way he could win the election continuing to tell them what they wanted to hear.  The question is, will Romney and his fellow Republicans see that.

Notably, the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) contingent in congress, that includes both Tea Party Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats, lost ground, albeit only a little.  The conservative tide that seemed to be flowing in now seems to have ebbed and is receding, so the audience for a moderate Mitt Romney's real politics might be a little larger today than it was on Monday.  But there remains a stubborn core in the Republican Party that refuses to accept the waning credibility of supply-side economics, which is the contingent that Romney might address successfully to redeem the viability of his party.  In Arizona, for example, Republican Senator-elect Republican Jeff Flake was interviewed on NPR after the statement of Speaker of the House John Boehner made a statement in his grave, self-important tone that the Republicans were open to increased revenue as long as it was business friendly.  That is code, as it was last year and the year before, for a promise that the Republicans in congress will continue as they have been...refusing to support new taxes of any kind...because under supply-side theory all taxes are inimical to business.

But Romney could make a difference on this point with people like Flake.  If he points out that the average American pays taxes on his dividends and interest at his marginal rate and Republicans aren't complaining about that, the thin veneer of respectability that supply-side defense of wealth concentration still maintains could be chipped away to the extent that special treatment of capital gains loses its luster as a shiny object for supply-siders to be attracted to.  Reversing that policy--making dividends and interest taxable at lower rates and capital gains at the marginal rate--would be a "business friendly" policy change that not just Americans, but American voters might just notice and reward in the next election.  Throw in the fact that money in taxpayers' pockets will do more to stimulate the economy than money in patricians' bank accounts that they will never spend and you have a real stimulus for the economy that is also a winner at the polls for whoever makes that point.  That is the future for the Republican Party: a more moderate, consumer friendly economic policy...even if they don't abandon the supply-side completely.  The question for Mitt Romney is, will he be the agent of that change?

Your friend,

Mike