Mitt Romney should be the general manager of the conservative movement

Mitt Romney is never, ever, ever going to be president. And maybe that's to his credit: Romney made a wise and just decision in not seeking the presidential nomination for a third straight election cycle.

Romney will turn 68 this year, and has a healthy lifestyle. He probably has many more active years ahead of him, and I don't think the man who co-founded Bain Capital and invented the Romney Olympics is going to want to spend them reading books by the fireplace. He also has tremendous managerial gifts, a very significant business and political network, and not a little bit of money. He has a lot left to contribute to America. So what should he do?

One option might be to go back to work in business. Unlike the bizarro world of politics, business is straightforward. And Romney does seem to be involved in his son's private equity firm. Or he might want to devote himself full time to what seemed to bring out the best in him: church and family.

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But in both those cases, it's hard to imagine Romney doing either or both full time if he truly wants to put his gifts to their fullest use to the service of the country.

Instead, as I've already suggested, Romney should devote himself to public policy. Specifically, he should work to promote innovative thinkers on the right who can apply the right's timeless principles to the new challenges America faces in the post-Obama era.

The Republican Party's biggest challenge today is demonstrating to America's great middle that it has its interests at heart. And to do this, slogans and pie-in-the-sky policies aren't going to work. What will work, instead, are concrete conservative policies that deliver results to America's middle class. And Mitt Romney may be the man to lead the charge.

It may sound funny to cast as a conservative thought leader the laughably "severely conservative" man who built ObamaCare's predecessor and flip-flopped on a raft of issues. But Mitt Romney is a data-driven, numbers guy who understands policy. In this new endeavor, his ideological flexibility would be an asset, not a liability, as it would allow him to think outside the traditional GOP box. How to replace ObamaCare? How to reform schools? How to make work pay again? What is needed is not just one idea, but dozens of ideas, and from many different strands on the right. Mitt Romney isn't the guy to dream up these ideas. And he's not the one to present them to America. But he very well might be the one to lead the conference room meetings and brainstorms at think tanks, to work the phones and pore over the numbers. Think of him as the general manager the conservative movement needs.

Like the venture capitalist he once was, Romney would be backing a portfolio of approaches to fixing America's most pressing challenges. In so doing, he wouldn't become president. But he might become something almost as good: an intellectual-elder statesman of the Republican Party. Not bad for a two-time loser's new act.