Some of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign proposals are bad ideas: His promise to launch a trade war with China, for example. (He doesn’t put it quite that way, of course.) Others, such as his 20 percent across-the-board cut in tax rates, are unlikely to go anywhere. We don’t have much reason to think he could speed up the economic recovery, any more than President Barack Obama could if re-elected.

Romney could, nonetheless, accomplish a few important policy goals – enough of them to motivate a conservative-minded voter to support him:

• The health-care law. Romney has been disappointingly vague about his health-care plans. But if elected, he will face enormous pressure to deliver on his promise to repeal Obama’s health law, and legislation to that effect is unlikely to succeed unless Romney couples it with a conservative alternative.