It doesn't feel like morning in America these days, but the country can rebound if it tackles domestic problems like excessive dependence on oil and mounting debt while keeping an aggressive stance against terrorism in Iraq and beyond, Mitt Romney said in an interview with Monitor editors and reporters yesterday.

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential candidate, said the United States is at a historic crossroads because of pressures from three sources: the threat of "global jihad," increasing competition from Asia, and festering domestic problems.

"I will give it every ounce of my energy to get good Democrats and good Republicans to work together to overcome the challenges we face," Romney said. "I believe that properly directed . . . our future will be bright and people will say, 'Okay, it's morning in America again.' Right now, it doesn't feel like it."

Over the course of the hour-long session, the 60-year-old businessman spoke of his passion for data in decision-making and quoted a psalm to explain why he wishes he'd had more than five children. He described "jihadists" bent on causing the "collapse of civilization" and said the Bush administration has struck the right balance between privacy and security.

"I believe that the first civil liberty that I want to see protected is my right to be kept alive," Romney said. "I expect my government to keep me from getting blown up."

Asked about the use of torture to interrogate terror suspects, Romney was less than clear about what techniques he sees as legal - deliberately so, he said, because he doesn't want terrorists to know exactly what Americans will do. But Romney also grouped himself among those "adamantly opposed to torture."

"I think it's better to leave ambiguous the nature of the interrogation techniques we use," he said. "I know there's a great deal of concern about how we might be seen. And I guess the question is, by whom?"

In particular, Romney declined to say whether waterboarding, a controversial technique that simulates drowning, is torture. The Republican field has split on this question. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has said he isn't sure if it is, sparking sharp reprimand recently from Arizona Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war who was tortured in Vietnam.

"They should know what it is. It is not a complicated procedure," McCain told the New York Times last month. "It is torture."

On the home front, Romney said, the nation has $60 trillion in future obligations in Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the national debt - and an annual budget of $3 trillion.

One of the reasons for the plummeting value of the dollar, he said, is the fact that Washington has done little to deal with festering problems. "I think people look at America and say, 'These guys aren't willing to solve their problems,' " he said.

The American people need a leader to go to them and lay out their options, Romney said, taking energy policy as an example.

"They can have $150-a-barrel oil . . . making (Russian President Vladimir) Putin the leader of a superpower again and reignite, potentially, a Cold War, which is unthinkable," he said. "Or, we can build more nuclear power plants and invest in new technologies like liquefied coal and have much higher R-factors in our homes and much higher mileage in our cars."

Romney cited an unlikely role model for a Republican presidential candidate. He'd seen some of Franklin Roosevelt's famed fireside chats on a public television station over the weekend.

"He educated the American people," Romney said. "He was not just commander-in-chief but educator in chief. We're going to have to do that again."

Single page