comMITTed to Romney!

My visit with the next President of the United States, Governor Mitt Romney

It’s not every day that you get the chance to meet the next President of the United States, but on Saturday in Des Moines Iowa that’s just what I did. I left the day before at around 10:30AM after picking up my rental car from Enterprise. The trip was fairly boring with the exception of passing by Ronald W. Reagan’s boyhood home in Eureka, IL. I arrived in Iowa around 7:15PM that night and met Jeff Fuller from Iowans for Romney as well as his family.

After not much sleep I awoke at 4:20AM to get ready for the breakfast at the Iowa State Republican Convention. We arrived a bit early, so we were able to secure a table in the front of the room. You could tell that he was visibly tired, but that would be expected considering he was in Idaho the previous night giving a talk to the Idaho State Republican Convention. Not to mention that he had two meetings prior to the breakfast. He arrived in the room (and walked right past our table) and stood there with his wife and son, and patiently waited for Doug Gross to finish his warm up speech. A few people took pictures of them while they waited.

After Doug Gross’s introduction he arrived on stage to a roaring round of applause from the at this point standing room only crowd. Despite his tiredness he spoke with eloquence and wit. This speech was different than most that I had watched on C-Span, in that he spoke longer with more topics. He did use his familiar humor stories, including the one where he speaks of himself being on the front page of the sports section and his lack of athletic ability. He goes on to say that his sons had to call him up and tell him about it.

Governor Romney spoke on several topics including the war in Iraq and the need to keep fighting against the Jihadists. The room applauded loudly when he spoke about those topics, as well as when he later mentioned our brave men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He also mentioned our need to compete in a global economy; saying that the Europeans and Asians were doing a better job at education than we are here. He said that China graduates 7 times the amount of engineers than we do here in the US with them graduating 24,900 to our 4,400. He then went on to say that we need to raise the bar in education especially in the area of technology. He said one area that we need to especially focus on are scholarships of merit like the John and Abigail Adams Scholarships in Massachusetts that gives a full paid scholarship to the top 25% of all High School Graduates. Another thing he added is that in terms of immigration we don’t need to be sending top graduates who’ve come to America to get an education back to their own countries after achieving receiving their degrees. That we should be employing them here and helping us expand and grow as a country.

The part that impressed me the most about the speech was when he talked about reigning in spending in Washington and bringing about fiscal discipline. That we need to decrease the borrowing of money, not increase taxes, but reduce government spending. This goes right along with what he’s already done in the state of Massachusetts. He then went on to say that our country needs a Presidential line item veto, and that we need to decrease our strong dependence on foreign oil. That we need to be investing in new fuels like liquefied coal, nuclear energy, effective energy, fuel efficient cars, and renewable fuels.

Culture was a large theme of the talk. He talked about liberty, opportunity, sacrifice, hard work, belief in a purpose driven life (he cited the book of the same name), a belief in something greater than us, respect for human life, and the family. He talked of “Great Necessities requiring Great Virtues”.

He discussed marriage being for the nurturing and development of children. During this part of the talk the crowd erupted in a thunderous applause. He went on to say that he has great optimism about our world, and the future.

He ended the talk with the now familiar story (it’s included in his book “Turnaround” detailing his job as CEO of the SLOC) of having to choose who would sit with Vice President Dick Cheney during the closing ceremonies of the Salt Lake Olympics in 2002. He chose Derek Parra the fastest man in the world on skates. Romney went on to say that when asked what the most meaningful part of being part of the Olympics, Parra said it was being able to carry the American Flag that had flown over the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 into the opening ceremonies. He was one of eight chosen to be honored to do this job. Romney said he expected that when it entered the stadium that the crowd would cheer wildly, but that it didn’t happen. He said there was complete silence. And after Robert Shaw sang the national anthem a gust of wind picked up the flag. It was obviously a very poignant moment for Romney.

During the speech Romney had his wife Ann and son Josh spoke. A very human story that Josh related to the audience was how recently his father had sat for an hour and read to his daughter the same story over and over again. It was particularly touching in that it showed just how human he is.

Here is a copy in PDF form of one of the brochures that were available at the breakfast.

After the talk Elizabeth Mehren of the Los Angeles Times interviewed me about my blog and my feelings about Governor Romney and his chances in the 2008 race. It was a nice interview, and I was able to get across several of my feelings about Governor Romney.

I also was able to shake Ann Romney’s hand, and introduce myself. She said that she knew who I was. That was pretty neat. I also was able to meet briefly with Julie Teer and Sally Canfield, two people involved with Governor Romney’s Commonwealth PAC. Also, several of us spoke to Josh Romney. We discussed the fact that his wife is due to have their third child soon, and I was able to convey to him that I felt that the third child was the toughest in that you only have two hands and two parents.

We were then scheduled to meet personally with Governor Romney for 11:40AM; we had a couple of hours before that so we walked around the convention floor. They had several booths set up for different candidates so it was nice to get to know some of those people. I also got the opportunity to speak with Senator Grassley of Iowa, in which I mentioned CF funding and wanting to get some. He mentioned that the University of Iowa was doing CF research, and that I should check into the NIH to see what kind of study dollars they were using for CF research. I had the ability to pass out my card to several Iowans at the convention while waiting for the meeting with Governor Romney. Also, I was able to meet with Doug Gross the head man for the Iowa affiliate of The Commonwealth PAC. I had a picture taken with him.

The time came to meet with Governor Romney, and we were ushered into this conference room. We were offered hot chocolate, water, coffee (for the non-LDS he said), and donuts. We sat around this square conference table and we went around the table introducing ourselves and telling why we felt that Romney should run for President. When it came to my time I told him about my blog, how long I’ve been doing it, and the fact that I felt that he was the person for the job especially because of his Health Care Initiative, his ability to work with both sides of the aisle and the fact that I felt that he had the fiscal discipline to cleanup the mess in Washington. He asked about my children (since he knew of their challenges), and I told him their names and ages. At the end of the meeting he signed two of our “Turnaround” books detailing his leadership of the SLOC. He signed mine, “Ann Marie - Thank You for Your Extraordinary Help! What a Friend! Mitt Romney, June 17, 2006”

Romney Signing My Book

Romney After Signing My Book

Then we were granted pictures with the Governor. Both Jeff and I had one taken together with Romney, and I had another taken individually with just Romney and myself. After the picture he shook my hand and said that he’d been praying for my kids. That especially touched me.

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