Ambitions grow and stances shift

The series  » Series link — Special report from The Boston Globe

After his failure to elect more Republican legislators in Massachusetts' 2004 campaign, Mitt Romney met with the Boston Globe's editorial board and made a surprising declaration: No longer could he put so much time into promoting his party.

"From now on, it's me-me-me," he said.

Within weeks of the election, Romney issued a plea for bipartisanship and laid out his vision for what would become a defining achievement. In a Globe op-ed piece headlined "My Plan for Massachusetts Health Insurance Reform," he unveiled a novel approach to providing health care for everyone.

The initial response fell somewhere between skepticism and incredulity.

"This administration hasn't been willing to work with anyone," Christine E. Canavan, then House vice chairwoman of the Joint Committee on Health Care, said at the time. "I just came out of a campaign where the man was trying to make sure I wasn't here anymore."

Within two days, though, Romney got a bracing response from an unlikely quarter. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the liberal lion who turned back Romney's freshman venture into politics in 1994, offered emphatic encouragement. One of the great champions of universal coverage saw promise in Romney's gambit.

"We're basically stalemated (in Washington), so the states are going to have to try to come up with a response," said Kennedy, who would play a behind-the-scenes role at key points in the legislative process back home in Boston.

The health-care campaign became the signature accomplishment of Romney's four years in office, showcasing the governor in all his complexity. It exhibited his strengths — a willingness to challenge convention by attacking an intractable problem in a creative way; but it also, critics say, revealed his shortcomings — taking too much credit for achievements and subordinating compromise for the sake of his own political prospects.

In the coming health-care battle, Romney's ambition for higher office would turn out to be both a spur and an impediment, making him hungry for a deal but unwilling to accept provisions that might anger national Republicans.

Throughout the health-care debate, he downplayed speculation that he planned to run for president. But by that point, the scaffolding for his 2008 campaign was well under construction.

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