Restoration and Renewal: A Theme for Romney?

I have a piece up today in the American Thinker that explores the idea of "Restoration and Renewal" as an organizing theme for the Romney campaign:

The technocratically-tending Romney has often defined himself less as a figure of rigid ideology and more as a data-driven competent-in-chief.  While a willingness to experiment may prove helpful in facing the nation's challenges, an organizing message may be helpful, too.  The former Massachusetts governor has a personal reputation (fostered by his experiences at Bain and the Olympic Games) as a turnaround artist, but the theme of restoration and renewal goes deeper than that.  Since at least 2000, a growing number of Americans have felt that there is something increasingly off about recent evolutions in the body politic -- a number that spiked after the economic cataclysm of 2008.  Both the Tea Party and, yes, Occupy Wall Street are responses to this feeling of unease.  The calculated amorphousness of Barack Obama's slogan of "hope and change" was meant to be an antidote to this unease; however, due to missteps and ideological choices, the Obama administration has exacerbated, not ameliorated, American dissatisfaction.  The purported great uniter has become the great polarizer, and 2012 looks to be a year in which the president aims to use this polarization as a tactic for his reelection campaign.  President Obama's campaign has struggled to articulate what exactly would be the animating end of a second Obama term.  The choice of "forward" as the campaign's new keyword is telling in its ambiguity -- forward, exactly, into what?  Further stagnation?  Further polarization?

Read the rest here.