Mitt Romney wants transformation. How do we know? The former Massachusetts Republican governor used the word "transform" or a variant no fewer than 13 times in his presidential announcement Tuesday.

Of course, so far at least, the greatest object of transformation in Romney’s life is -- Romney. And maybe that’s not so bad. Because, while some might wish for a president who is locked into predictable orthodoxy, right or left, America desperately needs a president who can learn and adapt -- and get things done.

Romney’s career as a venture capitalist -- he is worth an estimated $500 million -- is certainly proof of his acumen. And, at the same time, any baby boomer who has been happily married to the same woman for 37 years deserves a medal for good conduct during sexual revolution.

So when Romney, whose father, George, was a Detroit auto magnate turned governor, declares that "innovation and transformation have been at the heart of America’s success," he knows whereof he speaks.

Romney’s decision to announce from the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan was controversial in light of Ford’s anti-Semitism, but Ford’s economic legacy deserves to be remembered and, let’s hope, replicated in our own time. We might not need Henry Ford’s politics, but we need the vision of the man who, a century ago, introduced assembly-line mass production to the auto industry, thus guaranteeing America’s economic -- and military -- ascendancy.

As an aside, in Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima, the World War II movie told from the Japanese point of view, the commander explains to his soldiers that they are doomed to defeat because they are fighting a nation that makes 5 million cars a year -- and his subordinates all look at each other and agree, yes, that’s a clincher of an argument. And, of course, although the Japanese fight bravely, nearly all of them are soon killed, buried under an avalanche of American steel.

Indeed, it’s not an accident that, in the decades since 1945, Japan has set about building the sort of industrial plants that Henry Ford would have admired. During that same period, America’s share of world auto production has fallen from 90 percent to 10 percent. Is that militarily significant? We’ll find out in the next big war.

But, in the meantime, the next president will have to grapple first with public-sector issues. The universal health-care program that Romney enacted in Massachusetts was a deft compromise, sitting snugly between the social-contract imperative to get everyone covered and the equally strong need to avoid bureaucratic socialism.

So when he said on Tuesday, "If there ever was a time when innovation and transformation were needed in government, it is now," Romney was accurately describing the need to overhaul the doddering status quo in health care, education and homeland security -- just for starters.

He was also correct when he added, "I do not believe Washington can be transformed from within by a lifelong politician." To put it another way, does anybody really believe that Hillary Rodham Clinton or John McCain, for example, have demonstrated the capacity to look upon the current mess with fresh eyes?

One might endorse their platforms on this or that, but both Clinton and McCain, different as they might be on the details, are products of the political system in which they have successfully operated for decades. They are reactors, not actors.

Critics are eager to point out that Romney has changed his position -- or, if you prefer, flip-flopped -- on issues including gay rights, abortion, even taxes.

But innovation and transformation seem inevitable, even essential. After eight years of slippery opportunism, and after eight more years of "moral clarity" that has become indistinguishable from myopic obsession, perhaps voters in 2008 will embrace a candidate who has demonstrated that he or she has sound personal values, even as we are told that we have to learn from our mistakes -- that we must learn anew and act anew.