Romney Hopes Executive Experience Will Distinguish Himself

From CBS News' Scott Conroy:

TAMPA, FLA. -- As Mitt Romney tries to distinguish himself in a crowded Republican field, his campaign has suggested time and again that John McCain lacks the real-world experience required to turn around the ailing economy. Romney himself is delivering his anti-McCain message in a more understated way — by contrasting his experience as a businessman and governor with McCain’s years in the Senate.

“You have that executive leadership where you learn how to pull together a team of people to listen to different ideas, to establish a course of action, to hire the people to carry out that course of action, to get budgets for it,” Romney said at a press conference. “ … that’s what my life’s been about - executive leadership. And there are others whose experience has been very different.”

Romney cited Mayor Giuliani as another GOP candidate who has had that kind of experience. Asked whether McCain lacked adequate knowledge about the economy, Romney would not answer directly. But he turned to presidential electoral history to further his point.

“I’d note that in the past, there have been big contests for the presidency between senators and governors, and senators talk about all the years of knowledge they’ve gathered by learning about topics in the Senate, and governors talk about actually having had executive leadership and having made decisions that make a difference,” Romney said. “And Americans typically side with the latter, recognizing that we don’t know what the problems are going to be that are most acute in the next eight years.”

Romney made his remarks after touring the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, a facility that employs over 3,500 people. During a speech to a couple hundred of those employees, Romney told of how as a young business consultant, he worked to help hospitals provide better care at lower cost.

“People were highly resistant of any idea that came from another institution, and so we ended up — as we were working with hospitals — we’d only show them data. We’d gather data from other hospitals, show them the best practice in terms of outcome and cost, just show it to them without any comment about it saying you ought to do this. We’d just show them it to them and let them come up with the idea as to what they should do and then it got adopted.”

Romney recalled how he later began a venture capital company, which invested in organizing a chain of surgical centers, and learned how challenging it could be to deal with Washington.

“I found how fun it is to work with the federal government,” Romney joked. “It’s a kind of bureaucratic institution, which changes the rules from time to time and can make life very difficult indeed.”