THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION
HUFFINGTON 08.26.12
AP PHOTO/JOSH REYNOLDS
Mitt Romeny’s
campaign
manager Matt
Rhoades at the
campaign’s
Boston
headquarters.
could be Romney’s legacy as well.
The idea of a one-term presidency became something of a
theme in my conversations with
Romney advisers in July. They
embraced it, even if it appeared
at times to be with the kind of
forced enthusiasm one might
have to muster up for a polar
bear swim in the dead of winter.
But there was also genuine exuberance, a preview of the inspired
sense among many—after Romney picked Ryan as his running
mate—that their campaign was
about something significant.
Multiple senior Romney advisers assured me that they had had
conversations with the candidate
in which he conveyed a depth of
conviction about the need to try
to enact something like Ryan’s
controversial budget and entitlement reforms. Romney, they said,
was willing to count the cost politically in order to achieve it.
“I think he is looking to get in
there and fix some things and get
out. I don’t think he cares,” one
senior Romney adviser, who was
not authorized to speak on the record, told me at the time.
There are certainly things to
be fixed.
Nearly 50 million Americans
over the age of 64—15 percent of
the total U.S. population—rely on
Medicare to pay for the majority of their health care. By 2030,
enrollment is projected to go up
to 80 million. The baby boomer
population has just begun to enter the program, and because of