As the survey result showed, I had a 91% overlap with the political views of Mitt Romney, and truth to tell, I have still not recovered from the American election and the disappearance of Romney from the public stage. As discussed in my Quadrant article on Lessons for the Australian election, he would have been the perfect president for our times.

Romney was far and away the best candidate available to the Republicans. In an environment of the politics of personal destruction, there was virtually no element of his life history that could be used against him. He was conservative to an exceptional degree. He was personally warm and humane. He had a professional background that made him almost ideal in trying to find a way through the fiscal mess previous administrations had created. He would have rid the USA of Obama’s impending health care disaster while being able to work with the states to make a system of health care universally available. And on foreign policy he would have supported our Western way of life against a rising tide of totalitarian regimes of various denominations. In each of these aspects he presented a fundamental difference from Obama.

Whether the pieces can be put together again after this loss is something I very much doubt but time does heal at least some of the wounds some of the time. But a tragic outcome all the same.