The former Massachusetts governor crossed the picket line to appear on The Tonight Show last night. The interview is broken up into two chunks. The first begins with Romney describing how he relaxes. Unfortunately Red Lasso’s recording clips off the first minute or so of the interview, but here’s a transcript of how it starts.

JAY LENO: Thanks for coming. I appreciate your making the trip.

MITT ROMNEY: Thank you. Good to be here.

JAY LENO: And congratulations on Michigan. That was exciting.

MITT ROMNEY: Very exciting for me.

JAY LENO: You got the gold. You almost took the silver. Got the gold.

MITT ROMNEY: I got Wyoming, too; so two golds, two silvers. That’s not bad.

JAY LENO: Good. Good. Good. Now, this seems like it’s ‑‑ for me it’s getting good, but for you guys it’s getting nasty. How are you holding up?

MITT ROMNEY: I do fine. You know, I start off the day with a ‑‑ actually with a bowl of granola. My wife makes granola. Before I go on a trip, she gets out the oats and honey and sesame seeds and chops up the almonds. So I take a bowl and have granola in the morning, and then I jog every other day three miles, and then at the end of the day, just to really relax, I take off a dark suit like this and put on a light one.

A conservative who eats granola. Rod Dreher would approve.

Here’s segment 1.

Here’s part 2.

Leno asks Romney about Hillary and Obama. He ends up saying nice things about…Ted Kennedy. It’s a lead balloon moment.

JAY LENO: How about your democratic rivals? Who’s the toughest one to run against?

MITT ROMNEY: I think either one presents a real opportunity for me.

JAY LENO: There’s not three?

MITT ROMNEY: Well, I think it’s sort of narrowing down to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. After coming in third ‑‑ as you pointed out in your monologue ‑‑ every single time at some point, you say, “You know, maybe it’s time to move on.” So I think it would come down to those two. By the way, I think I like both of them more than they like each other, but I do believe that they’re going to present a real contrast because they want to take America on a path, in my view, which is down the path of Europe of old, Big Brother, big taxes, big government. I don’t think that will fly.

JAY LENO: When you were governor, did you have any interaction with either Barack or Hillary?

Did you know them? Did you work with them?

MITT ROMNEY: I did not. I met the President, President Clinton, a couple of times. He’s a very engaging person. I met Barack Obama. We both appeared at the Gridiron Club, where we told jokes and we had fun doing that together. He’s got a lovely wife. My wife thinks she’s just terrific.

JAY LENO: So you never really had any ‑‑

MITT ROMNEY: No business with those guys. More business with Ted Kennedy. You know, I ran against Ted Kennedy.

JAY LENO: Right.

MITT ROMNEY: You know, he’s a hard‑working guy. He does his best. I disagree with him on virtually every issue, but we came together a couple of times, and frankly, I like Ted Kennedy.

JAY LENO: Who do you think has a bigger head, you or Ted Kennedy?

(Laughter.)

MITT ROMNEY: Oh, boy, it’s a competition. All three of us could join. Do you know that?

Toward the end, Leno asks about the economy and Iraq.

JAY LENO: You know, I would like to see you and Al Gore in the “Odd Couple.” That would be an acting job.

(Laughter.)

Let me ask you a serious question. Has Iraq sort of taken a back seat? I mean, when this started last January, Iraq seemed be to the main issue. Now it seems to be switching to the economy.

Do you find that’s true?

MITT ROMNEY: You know, it can’t take a back seat. Iraq is too critical, and it’s such a focal point of this global effort which is being waged by violent Jihadists to bring down all civilized nations. Pakistan under attack right now. You have to break it down. We have to be serious in our battle against global Jihad around the world, but our economy is also becoming a bigger issue, and I think people want somebody who knows how to deal with tough situations.

JAY LENO: Couldn’t our economy ‑‑ it seems to me if I was the people working against Al Qaeda, our troops are pretty strong, but our dollar is pretty weak, and it seems like we’re fighting against our dollar. Our dollar seems to be going down and down around the world. Now Europeans don’t want the dollar anymore. They want the Euro. How do we bring that back up? What do we do there?

MITT ROMNEY: Well, you can’t have the world’s most powerful military and be the superpower of the planet and have a second‑tier economy. In order to have a strong national defense, you have to have a strong national economy. Our economy has over the years been getting a little weaker compared to the economies of the world, particularly Asia, China, India, and they don’t always fight fair. We’re going to have to do a better job to make sure we have a level playing field and make it easier for our employers to hire people, train people, invest in technology and innovation, keep our tax burden down. We can do it. America can compete anywhere in the world. We can win. We have won. We will always be the leader as long as we make sure that the government finally gets off its duff and finally fixes what’s wrong in Washington.

The entire transcript is up at the LA Times.