Posted by
Glen Albrethsen on Wednesday, January 30, 2008 5:35:07 PM
I do have to admit--I've been fooling myself.
Can't really blame it on anyone else.
I allowed myself to dream that there's hope for all of us.
See, I've read Hugh Hewitt's book, A Mormon in the White House. Even more significant than that, though, no offense to Mr. Hewitt, I've also read Mitt Romney's book, Turnaround.
If you haven't, I think you should. If there were ever a blueprint into how someone thinks, it's that book. The only way you could get to know what makes him tick better is if you were a family member or a close friend.
Turnaround spends most of its pages talking about the 2002 Winter Olympic Games held in Salt Lake City. And it does so in exhaustive detail, because there was a mountain of things to overcome. And not only was that mountain scaled, it was conquered.
I've been dreaming ever since that, given the opportunity, Mitt Romney would do the same thing to the federal government that he did for the Salt Lake games.
I can just imagine him, sitting in the oval office, or some other strategy room, pouring over mounds and mounds of data--going over the entire width and breadth of the Federal government. Okay, maybe he wouldn't have the time to do that, but I can imagine him assembling a team that would do that, and then bring him a still very substantial stack and him pouring over that.
And then, with a grin on his face, start eliminating one duplicitous and wasteful department of the federal government after the other. I imagine this monolithic block, like in Transformers, beginning to fold in on itself, until it shrinks to the point where he could hold it in his hand.
I know this is bizarre, but the thought of the federal government actually shrinking before my eyes puts a wide grin on my face. It's a grin so ear to ear that I look like the Joker. And it just stays and stays and stays.
Because once the federal government is shrunk, and all the wasteful and under performing departments were gone or consolidated, that would mean that the government, for once the government, would be lean and mean and would quit feeding off my back pocket.
I could see him coming up with a way to deal with China, who's not only got us over a barrel because of our tip toeing around their sleeping giant, but are running us over with the barrel over and over again because we're in so much debt to them now. I could see him coming up with a long term tactic that would outsmart them, outwit them, and still have them guessing on how it's happening and not be able to figure out or stop it until it was too late.
I could see him resolving the issue in the Middle East, once and for all. Now, that's probably more outlandish than shrinking the federal government or taking on China, but you know what, I can dream, can't I?
The man has tackled big problems time and time again. Yes, he's had help, but it's been his ability to sift through and quantify data, get to the heart of the issue, which has been key. Given the chance, I know he could do it again.
Perhaps the greatest turnaround now, however, would somehow snapping a victory from the jaws of defeat to get the GOP nomination. If that were to happen, I think my grin would last almost as long as it would with a miniaturized federal government.