Romney's new venture

MITT ROMNEY didn't use a PowerPoint presentation to announce his campaign for president yesterday, but the Harvard MBA's acumen was sharp as ever. Romney chose to make his announcement in his native Michigan, where his family name is revered, avoiding his home state of Massachusetts, which these days serves him better as a punch line than a launch pad.

Indeed, Romney seemed almost to be repatriating yesterday. "I always imagined I would come back to Michigan someday," he said in his announcement speech. "That's why I took the bar exam here."

Romney's shifting loyalties also extend to Utah, where he became a star for turning around the scandal-plagued 2002 Olympics. He bought a $3.8 million home there and took advantage of a tax break reserved for permanent residents to the tune of $54,000. When that became an issue after he announced for governor in Massachusetts -- which has a seven-year residency requirement -- Romney amended his tax returns to claim Massachusetts residency and returned the $54,000.

Like the successful venture capitalist he is, Romney shops around for opportunities, making strategic investments in the offices, policies, and states that best serve his ambitions. In 2002 he initially said he wouldn't challenge Acting Governor Jane Swift for the corner office; then he muscled her aside. He said he wouldn't interfere with the lively Republican race for lieutenant governor; then he picked Kerry Healey to run with him.

Romney displays the same agility in his issue positions, adjusting them to fit each new constituency. As a candidate for governor in moderate Massachusetts he scoffed at taking a no-new-taxes pledge; now he's enthusiastic about the presidential litmus test. In 2002 he supported stem-cell research on embryos left over from fertility treatments; now he says he opposes government funding for such "ethically troublesome" work.

In his US Senate race against Ted Kennedy in 1994, he repeatedly said he supported abortion rights, even invoking his mother's failed campaign for US Senate in Michigan. "I joined my mother in 1970 when she said she was in favor of legalizing abortion," he protested when advocacy groups questioned his purity. In 2002, he said he supported Roe v. Wade and emergency contraception. In 2005, as he was mulling a national run, he described himself in these pages as "a prolife governor in a prochoice state."

Romney joins a long line of ambitious Massachusetts politicians who made a run for president -- two Kennedys, Michael Dukakis, Paul Tsongas, John Kerry. He knows what they knew: Massachusetts has a strategic advantage. Romney can joke about Chablis-sippers all he wants, but this state's proximity to New Hampshire gives him a major boost in the first primary, a short year from now.