What President Romney Would Look Like

by Stuart Shapiro

I’ve been thinking for a while that Mitt Romney struck me as a very similar politician to our 41st President.  But Maureen Dowd beat me to the analogy.

Poppy is an Episcopalian East Coast patrician, and Mitt is a Mormon Midwest patrician; their fathers were both archetypal moderate Republicans.

Poppy drinks martinis; Mitt drinks chocolate milk and Coke Zero. But 41 and the man he endorsed to be 45 share the gee-whiz language, hokey humor, awkward stage presence, sense of entitlement and noblesse oblige, need to break away from powerful patriarchs and prove themselves in business, gentlemanly demeanor that masks surprisingly sharp elbows, and the willingness to make whiplash switches from blue-blooded positions to red-state ones, leaving everyone to wonder: “Who is this guy at his core?”

If Romney is coupled with a Democratic Congress, then we may see a repeat of Bush 41’s tax increase and statutes like the American Disabilities Act.  If he is coupled with a Republican Congress, well we don’t know what President Bush 41 would have done, but I know I don’t want to find out.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.