Romney, Easing, Says Health Law Isn’t All Bad

The remarks were a marked departure from Mr. Romney’s frequently harsh and openly partisan critiques of the president on the campaign trail over the last year, and seemed to amount to a different tenor now that he has officially become the Republican presidential nominee: bipartisanship, of sorts.

They came in a rare interview on the NBC News program “Meet the Press,” and not the friendlier terrain of Fox News, on which Mr. Romney prefers to appear.

The approach, however fleeting it may be, appeared to be a direct and deliberate appeal to middle-of-the-road voters who have not made up their minds yet and are likely to decide the race. At one point, Mr. Romney said the speech last week by the country’s previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton, had “elevated” the party’s convention in Charlotte, N.C.

Asked by the show’s host, David Gregory, what elements of the health care program he would maintain, Mr. Romney said he would ensure that those with pre-existing conditions can obtain coverage, just as the president’s plan does.

“I’m not getting rid of all of health care reform,” Mr. Romney said, while emphasizing that he planned to replace the president’s plan with his own. “There are a number of things that I like in health care reform that I’m going to put in place. One is to make sure that those with pre-existing conditions can get coverage.”

Mr. Romney did not entirely refrain from jabbing at the president. He criticized Mr. Obama’s handling of the crisis over Iran’s nuclear program and insisted that should the president be re-elected, Americans would “see chronic high unemployment continue for another four years or longer.”

But he was also generous in his praise, commending the president twice for giving the order to kill Osama bin Laden, which as recently as April Mr. Romney had said “even Jimmy Carter” would have done.

“That was a great accomplishment,” Mr. Romney said on Sunday. “Using the drones to strike at Al Qaeda targets. I think those are positive developments.”

Mr. Romney, whose standing in several national polls improved slightly after the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla., said, “I’m in a better spot than I was before the convention.”

“People got to see Ann and hear our story,” he said, referring to this wife. “And the result of that is I’m better known, for better or for worse.”

Mr. Romney, who has repeatedly blamed the president for failing to curb the federal debt, said he would seek to balance the federal budget in 8 to 10 years, perhaps after his own potential presidency would end. Any attempt to do so in a first term, he said, would have “a dramatic impact on the economy — too dramatic.”

Yet neither Mr. Romney nor his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, who appeared on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” on ABC, offered details about how they planned to balance the budget. Asked separately what loopholes they would close to pay for their proposed tax cuts, neither of the men answered.

Mr. Obama pounced on that omission in an appearance in Melbourne, Fla., on Sunday. “When my opponents were asked about it today, it was like 2 plus 1 equals 5,” the president said, mocking the math underlying the Republican economic plan.

On “Meet the Press,” Mr. Romney made it clear what kind of budget cuts would be off limits under his presidency. He said he strongly disagreed with a compromise made last year by the White House and Congressional Republicans, including Mr. Ryan, that called for automatic cuts to military spending as a way to force a deal on deficit reduction.

“I thought it was a mistake on the part of the White House to propose it. I think it was a mistake for Republicans to go along with it,” he said.

Mr. Ryan, on “This Week,” stood by that agreement despite his new boss’s criticism, saying that he had been trying to find common ground with Mr. Obama. He called it a “step in the right direction.”

Mr. Romney seemed defensive when Mr. Gregory asked about criticism from the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard — and from others on both sides of the ideological divide — that he did not speak about the conflict in Afghanistan when he accepted his party’s nomination in Tampa.

“Was that a mistake, with so much sacrifice in two wars over the period of this last decade?” Mr. Gregory asked.

Mr. Romney answered, “You know, I find it interesting that people are curious about mentioning words in a speech as opposed to policy,” noting that he had discussed the war in Afghanistan just before the convention, in a speech to the American Legion. “I went to the American Legion,” he said, “and spoke with our veterans there and described my policy as it relates to Afghanistan and other foreign policy and our military.”

When Mr. Gregory noted that his American Legion address had not had the same large audience as the convention speech — “tens of millions of people” — Mr. Romney replied: “What I’ve found is that wherever I go, I am speaking to tens of millions of people. Everything I say is picked up by you and by others, and that’s the way it ought to be.”

Officer in Motorcade Killed

A police officer escorting President Obama’s motorcade was killed on Sunday when his motorcycle was hit by a pickup truck. The Associated Press quoted a spokeswoman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department as saying that the officer, a member of the Jupiter Police Department, was on Interstate 95 in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Sunday preparing to shut the roadway down when he was struck. Sgt. Scott Pascarella, a Jupiter police spokesman, identified the officer as Bruce St. Laurent, a 20-year veteran of the force. The president was informed of the accident, said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary.