Friday, August 17, 2012

Preparing For A Mitt Romney Presidency

By Susan Duclos

In accordance with the Pre-Election Presidential Transition Act of 2010, which urges campaigns to plan well before Election Day, Mitt Romney has a team referred to as "The Readiness Project" , the New York Times reports:

Mr. Romney’s transition team, which has quietly been ramping up since June, is an extension of his campaign and reflects many hallmarks of the Romney operation — methodical and disciplined, with acute attention to detail. The team also offers a glimpse of what might be Mr. Romney’s approach to governing, functioning much like his old private equity firm, Bain Capital. The team is assessing the government and looking for ways to make it more efficient and streamlined. 

“With Mitt, his approach to problem solving is first to identify the problem, make sure you’re solving for the problem actually there; second, look at best practices; third, apply best practices to the problem at hand; and fourth, execute on it,” said Beth Myers, a top Romney adviser who worked on his transition team in 2003, when he became governor of Massachusetts. 

Mr. Romney’s transition team, known within the campaign as “The Readiness Project,” is led by Mike Leavitt, a former governor of Utah and a former secretary of Health and Human Services, and until recently included only three other advisers — Ms. Myers; Bob White, a longtime friend of Mr. Romney who was chairman of his transition in Massachusetts; and Ron Kaufman, a senior adviser and Republican national committee member from Massachusetts. 

The meeting on Tuesday, however, reflected the fact that less than three months from Election Day, the Romney campaign is putting together a framework should he win the White House.

It is all about being ready on day one should the Romney/Ryan 2012 ticket win the November presidential election, straddling the line between preparing and being informed and being presumptuous, which is the reason the NYT says Team Romney doesn't speak much about this aspect of the presidential campaign.

Read the entire piece to see the process of what is happening behind the scenes, above and beyond the stump speeches, interviews and campaign ads.