Mitt Romney's Book Sets Stage for 2012 White House Run

WASHINGTON, March 2, 2010— -- The title of Mitt Romney's new book, "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness," is a not-so-subtle jab at the visits President Obama made overseas when he first took office, derided by the Right as the "American Apology Tour."

Romney's book as a whole, however, may best be remembered not for the contrasts it offers with the incumbent president but for the contrasts it presents with "Going Rogue," the best-selling memoir of Sarah Palin, a potential Romney rival for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Where Palin's book is a mix of score settling and juicy anecdotes, Romney's book consists of a 64-point plan for strengthening the United States and countless references to what he has been reading. Palin's book titillated audiences with her take on her husband without his shirt on ("Dang, I thought. Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd?").

Romney's readers, by contrast, will have to make do with his take on the decline of the Ottoman Empire and other great powers (easy money and a lack of innovation did them in, in case you were wondering).

This is not to say that Romney's book is free of anecdotes.

In between his policy prescriptions and reflections on world history, the former Massachusetts governor shares his distaste for weeding, his displeasure with one of his son's teachers, and the discomfort of his presidential campaign aides when he would discuss the rate of out-of-wedlock births among African Americans.

The book's core, however, are his proposals on everything from national security to the economy, from health care to energy and from entitlements to education.

The policy prescriptions laid out in the book are too many to recount in full. But the broad strokes are a hard line on foreign policy coupled with a bit more ideological flexibility on the domestic front.

The overarching concept which animates Romney's book is the idea the United States must remain strong for the world to remain free.