What are the odds of this? A guy gets into a head-on collision, has a police officer write "He is dead" at the scene, and lives to tell.

Mitt Romney knows a thing or two about second chances.

After that long-ago highway collision when he was a young missionary serving in France, Romney earned an outsized reputation and millions of dollars as a corporate turnaround artist, fixing bottom lines, cleaning up the scandal-tarred Salt Lake City Olympics and giving various other endeavors a second wind.

Now he is determined to do that for himself.

"I've never seen an enterprise in more desperate need of a turnaround than the U.S. government," Romney says.