The man who planned to be president wakes up each morning now without a plan.
Mitt Romney looks out the windows of his beach house in La Jolla, a moneyed and pristine enclave of San Diego, at noisy construction workers fixing up his next-door neighbor's home, sending regular updates on the renovation. He devours news from Washington, shaking his head and wondering what if.
Gone are the minute-by-minute schedules and the swarm of Secret Service agents. There is no aide to make his peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches. Romney hangs around the house, sometimes alone, pecking away at his iPad and emailing his CEO buddies, who have been swooping in and out of La Jolla to visit. He wrote to one who is having a liver transplant soon, "I'll change your bedpan, take you back and forth to treatment."