Romney in Cabinet would be good for U.S. and Trump

Frank Bruni

A show of hands, please: How many of you would like Donald Trump to step away from his Twitter account? I’m pretty sure I have a majority, but to be safe: How many can at least agree no tweets before breakfast?

Yowza. I’m above 95 percent. Reince, you don’t have to nod wildly and jump up and down; the raised hand will do. And you get one hand, Melania, not two.

Thanks in part to the president-elect’s predilection for outbursts of fewer than 140 characters, he routinely comes across as petty and mercurial. But right now he has an opportunity for the opposite impression. He can choose Mitt Romney as his secretary of state.

That he’s actually mulling this is alone extraordinary. Trump knows how to carry a grudge the way Jim Brown knew how to carry a football, and Romney gave him cause for vengefulness, with a major speech during the GOP primaries that labeled him a fraud and exhorted Americans to reject him.

If Trump taps Romney, he’ll be sending a powerful message to an anxious world that he’s not hos- tage to the darkest parts of his character.

Granted, Romney’s résumé isn’t the most logical for the job. His lone public office was governor of Massachusetts.

But not all our secretaries of state were steeped in foreign affairs, like Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice. Many had backgrounds principally devoted to other concerns. That was true of James Baker, who served under the first President Bush, and of Hillary Clinton, though she traveled the world as first lady and was on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Besides which, Romney isn’t competing against the entire universe of possibilities. He’s competing against Rudy Giuliani, who recently has done such a masterful impersonation of a raving lunatic that I doubt he could get seasonal retail work.

David Petraeus is also in play, but his supposed brilliance matters less in this case than his conviction for mishandling classified information. Picking him would brand Trump an utter hypocrite, given how vehemently he threatened to jail Clinton for related trespasses.

As for Sen. Bob Corker, he doesn’t have the useful political celebrity that Clinton and then John Kerry brought to the position. Romney does.

With Trump’s Cabinet and staff picks so far, he has repaid his staunchest supporters. With Romney, he would be taking a more inclusive, conciliatory approach that befits his lack of any mandate, tries to move the country past such a divisive campaign and reassures jittery allies. It would help him govern, by signaling that he’s bigger than his grievances.

Despite the howls of protest from the right, it would hardly be an undignified, unprecedented surrender: There was bad blood aplenty between Clinton and President Barack Obama before he brought her aboard.

It would also reward someone who seems to have the country’s best interests at heart. Romney would be following the example of his father, George, who went from Richard Nixon’s adversary to his housing secretary, because a person can arguably do more on the field, under a flawed coach, than on the sidelines, griping.

So there’s a Trump tweet I do hope to see: “Impressive dinner with Mitt Romney. I believe he can help us MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. He’s hired!”