The answer to that question is why most readers will bother buying, borrowing or reading this book by the former Massachusetts Governor and 2008 Presidential primary candidate. In this time of national and international recession the voters and affected non-voters around the world are looking for a leader who can actually solve the major emergencies facing America, Freedom and Capitalism itself.
As the grandson of American Immigrants whose family was run out of Mexico by Mexican revolutionaries angry with American Expatriates, Mitt grew up as part of a family that worked themselves up from desperate poverty to live the American Dream. His father worked as a wall plasterer while he supported his family and worked his way through college. He eventually earned his way into the presidency of American Motor Corporation (AMC) and bet his house (or at least the money he'd made from selling his home) on the successful development of the Rambler compact car. He later became three-time governor of Michigan.
Mitt grew up in a family that had strong core values and he discusses those core values throughout this book. This reviewer actually met most of Mitt's family including Gov. George Romney when Mitt ran an unsuccessful campaign for Senate in Massachusetts. The whole family was part of that campaign and the lessons they learned with that loss served Mitt well a few years when he successfully won election for the Governorship of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Romney managed to do a good job managing that state even though he didn't have enough Republican legislative votes to uphold a veto and therefore had to reach across the aisle to the Democrats controlling the State House in order to accomplish his agenda.
Romney believes that if America becomes a victim of socialism that freedom throughout the world will be lost. If the nation is not careful, it will become a second rate world country--still strong enough to survive, but not strong enough to defend freedom anywhere else in the world.
"There are three pillars that sustain a free and strong America:
l. A Strong Economy
2. A Strong Military
3. A free and Strong People."
Romney then provides an agenda for a free and strong America. His list of goals includes 64 separate items and even Romney admits that his is not a complete list of changes needed. Studying that agenda will provide the reader with a decent idea of how Romney would tackle the nation's problems.
The book's second chapter "Why Nations Decline" is also instructive. Mitt briefly examines the reasons the Ottomans, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Chinese, the British, the Soviets--these were all super-powers of their respective eras "and they were all surpassed." The reasons for these nation's failures were eerily similar to much of what is occurring in the USA and Western Europe.
The book examines many of the reasons for today's problems and provides some pretty decent ideas about how to solve them. Romney also describes why many people prefer to live in denial of the facts and why in past civilizations that failure to face undeniable facts led to the destruction of those great civilizations.
In the book's eleventh and last chapter this reader was surprised by some personal
stories that brought tears to my eyes. Since I was reading while seated at the Prudential Center Food Court Terrace, it was a little embarrassing to suddenly finding my eyes tearing up and salty streams trickling down my cheeks. That anything in this volume might require having tissues available was a total shock. Surprise, surprise, because the previous 99% of the book had been straight-forward logic and business-like explanations of Romney's beliefs and ideas on how to solve the nation's rapidly expanding and very dangerous problems, this ability to bring forth tears in an audience was enlightening.
The text was not boring and there was a little humor such as Mitt's description of the fall his wife Ann experienced when the stage they were speaking from in Dubuque, Iowa, collapsed. When she got up, "dusted herself off, and later ad-libbed, `Well, I fell on de butt in Dubuque.'" The man obvious isn't just a cool headed, unflappable, maybe sometimes seemingly unfeeling man; he is an experienced leader and well schooled in the workings of Capitalism, industrial production and job producing economics He is also amazingly well spoken and as Bostonians know, he used to sometimes substitute as a host on a popular conservative talk show in order to keep in touch with the Massachusetts public. He wasn't afraid to talk to the general public, but he relished the opportunity that only talk radio provides for contact with typical voters. He loved that form of give and take communication.
This is a good read for this political genre. It will provide the information that many people will need to decide if years of leadership experience should triumph over hope.
(Please take a moment to see and enjoy the customer photographs I've uploaded to this listing site.)
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