Mitt seems to be made of right stuff for '08

Mitt Romney is best known in the West as the "white knight" who galloped in to save the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympics from scandal-tainted problems and turned the event into an international success.

In the East he's best known as a corporate turnaround whiz who made millions, and more recently as a popular conservative governor of liberal Massachusetts.

Now, in a society that starts speculating about the next presidential election even before the present one is decided, he's being increasingly touted as a possible presidential candidate in 2008.

At last week's Republican national convention in New York, he didn't get the same exposure as John McCain, Rudy Giuliani or George Pataki, all of whom are also potential candidates four years from now. But he did get a prime time spot, delivering a fiery speech in support of President Bush, and tweaking John Kerry as a vacillating leader who "comes in 57 varieties," a sly reference to Kerry's marriage to Heinz ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Good manners and political prudence dictate that all the prospects feign disinterest in the midst of Bush's re-election campaign. Romney is no exception, telling reporters that he's simply looking forward to another term as governor of Massachusetts. He'll be up for re-election in 2006, and pundits in Boston, where politics is the breath of life, say it would be a cake walk for him. If they are right, this is remarkable for Romney is a conservative, Republican Mormon in a state liberal, Democratic, with a significant Roman Catholic population.

Though his conservative positions on such issues as same-sex marriage have stoked Democratic ire, his record as a fiscal fixer has won acclaim from many Massachusetts citizens. He has turned a state with a history of billion-dollar deficits into one with a surplus of millions. This he has done not by raising taxes but by reorganization and reform. Thus he has replicated his track record both in the private sector and with the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. When he took over management of the Olympics, the project was deeply in debt. Although he was wealthy in his own right and hardly in need of it, Romney declined to collect his salary of $275,000 a year unless he produced a profit for the Games. He did come through with a multimillion-dollar profit, whereupon he drew the three years' salary due at the end of his assignment and donated it to charity.