I Told Mr. Romney

I told Governor Romney when he started his race for the Presidency to be consistent and always answer questions in a straight forward fashion. Avoiding questions, especially well thought out ones, would make him appear aloof. I told Governor Romney that if he wanted to win big he needed to be more accessible to the people. You cannot come across as a successful businessman and expect all those impacted by a very poor economy to identify with you enough to vote for you. I told Mr. Romney that entitlement programs have to be bolstered, not completely dismantled and reconfigured anew, if you want the senior citizen vote.

I told Mr. Romney that he must get women to support him in large, even overwhelmingly large, numbers if he truly entertained any idea of winning the election to be President of the United States. I told Mitt Romney that he has to be perceived as a strong international diplomat not simply by the electorate but by world leaders if he anticipated the American public to get behind him and rally for him. I told Mitt that a running mate like Paul Ryan made little sense if he truly wanted to win. Sure Ryan is brilliant and understands economics, at least that is what they say, but Mr. Ryan is a fervent member of the right wing, conservative tea party. Only tea partyers can like a man like Paul Ryan. Voters had to have been turned off by him and his absent presentation of a real economic policy. I told Mr. Romney that selecting Ryan as a running mate was not quite as goofy as John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin but it was awfully close.  I told Mr. Romney that a really good running mate to consider would have been Senator Marko Rubio from Florida. Mr. Rubio might have brought the Latino vote into the Republican camp, something he sorely lacked on election day.

I told Mitt that his relationship with Mr. Netanyahu was terrific and might actually garner some votes for him but not if he overplayed it. Too many people saw Governor Romney as pandering to the Israelis and therefore, the Jewish vote in general. I told MItt that he must understand the liberal Jewish voter and how tzedakah was a big part of the Tribe’s ancestry and future. You can tighten up on your overhead and cut down on spending but you cannot forget that the concept of Tikkum Olam, which is something Mr. Romney did not seem to be able to get his mind around in the campaign, and is at the social heart of the Jewish voter.

I also told Mr. Romney that he needed to come across a bit more aggressively when it came to large conglomerates sucking the American worker dry. Most of the underemployed or unemployed workers in America woke up the next day to news that the market dropped a whopping percent which only reinforced the image of Romney as the candidate for the unrespected Wall Street types. After all, workers reasoned that the market dropped because of the disappointment that under President Obama’s second term the rich will have to pay a bit more in taxes. I told the Governor that he had to push the agenda of jobs, bringing them back to the U.S. and creating new ones. He did say that every so often but not too many people believed him.

In my dreams I told Governor Mitt Romney all these things and more. And, early this morning i even said to him “I hate to say I told you so.” Too bad he could not hear me. Truth is I am not sure if I actually had an audience with him he would have been receptive to any of it. Truth is I am not sure he would have been a great president either. What I do know is that both America and the world needs a strong President of the United States. I am not sure that that type of person was reelected. What I am sure of is that Americans as a rule tend to be resilient people. Maybe that is because the U.S. is made up of refugees – people with the determination to make a new life for themselves and their families. It may even be stamped into their DNA. America consists of people who left other places to come to a new world that offered them real opportunity. I trust that the vision of a welcoming and supportive America, with all of its problems, will continue. I also believe that Americans are strong supporters of Israel and that will not change.

Now what I would like to tell President Obama is this: