If Mitt Romney Could Do It All Over Again...

WASHINGTON, DC — Regrets, Mitt Romney has a few.

The 2012 presidential nominee and former Massachusetts governor eschewed what would have a been a 17-way race for the 2016 Republican nomination, had he participated. Four years later, he's also the subject of renewed criticism for his loss to a then-incumbent President Obama.

Romney tackled those topics and more with lighthearted self-deprecation Wednesday during a speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters in Washington, D.C.

"I get asked on a regular basis, 'Boy, why aren't you running this year?' I ask myself that on a regular basis, too," Romney said, offering a rueful smile met with laughter from the audience. "But I did that once—you may not have known that—and people ask me, 'Well, why did you lose?'"

To that, Romney invoked a line from Walter Mondale, a Democrat trounced by Ronald Reagan in the 1984 presidential election—"All my life I wanted to run for president in the worst way, and that's what I did."

More laughter.

Romney said his takeaway from the experience was even more optimism for the country.

"In my view," he said, "this century will remain an American century. The only thing that will mess that up is if government can't deal with the inevitable challenges that any great society confronts."

He went on to speak in upbeat tones, focused on trade and innovation. Criticism was leveled at the federal government writ large, and on both sides of the aisle in Congress for not addressing issues from entitlement programs to poverty.

He steered clear of overtly insulting Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump, with whom Romney has previously feuded. As Trump approaches what some polls suggest could be an even greater loss than Romney's 2012 defeat, the former candidate seems to have forsaken the sharp barbs he lobbed at Trump earlier in the election cycle.

While he bemoaned the lack of attention to certain key issues during this year's presidential debates, Romney expressed disappointment in himself, saying he wished in his own campaign he had better communicated the ways his policies would have benefited the middle class.

“It’s something which, gosh, I kick myself as a Republican nominee for president not having done a better job communicating this,” he said, highlighting the difference between speaking to a primary audience of core Republicans versus the nation as a whole. “... they think the reason I’m talking about business is because all I care about is rich people and business leaders. Look, rich people and business people do well whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge. The real people who suffer when business is leaving or not successful are the people in the middle class.”

He closed with a passionate rebuke of federal government ineptitude that sounded a whole lot like a stump speech and not unlike a swipe against Trumpian "Great Again" rhetoric.

"I love this country. ... I don't shrink from saying that America is the greatest nation in the history of the earth," he said. "But I know we face extraordinary challenges, and we're not making progress against those challenges as we should in Washington. ... Whether you're Republican or Democrat, just fight to take on the real challenges, and deal with them, and get these things resolved so that the energy and the passion of the American people can create the businesses and grow the enterprises that will hire more people, lead to higher wages for the American people and make sure that we can finance and maintain the great strength that is America."

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