As a prepares for a potential third run for the White House, Mitt Romney on Wednesday told students at Mississippi State University what lessons he learned from his loss to President Obama, the New York Times reported.

"It would be nice if people who run for office, that their leadership experience, what they've accomplished in life, would be a bigger part of what people are focused on, but it's not," the 2012 GOP presidential nominee mused. "Mostly, it's what you say -- and what you do is a lot more important than just what you say."

In a question-and-answer session after his speech, Romney offered a self-assessment in how the Republican Party should act in the next campaign, the newspaper noted, even though he had initially refused to dwell on what went wrong in his last bid.

The former Massachusetts governor insisted that the GOP must better explain its views on economic issues. "The reason I'm talking about the economy and small business is because I want there to be more jobs," he insisted.

Romney also addressed the issue of his considerable wealth, which had haunted him during his 2012 campaign and been a favorite talking point of Obama's. "As you've no doubt heard, I'm already rich," Mr. Romney joked.

Meanwhile, the Boston Globe noted that the defeated candidate, assuming he would not run for political office again, "embarked on something of a real estate spree" in 2013. Romney simultaneously built two multimillion-dollar homes, one in La Jolla, California, and the other in Utah's capitol, Salt Lake City, his hometown newspaper detailed.

The former private equity executive also acquired a slopeside ski chalet in Park City, Utah, the Boston Globe added. "Now that he's considering a third presidential bid, the monuments of his wealth could become a political inconvenience," the newspaper judged.

Beyond questions of style and personality, Romney used the Mississippi State speech to attack Hillary Clinton, the undisputed Democratic frontrunner in the 2016 race. The former secretary of state may not be able to provide economic opportunities for all "if she doesn't know where all the jobs come from in the first place," he quipped, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Romney went on to criticize Clinton's "timid" foreign policy, which he said was wrong about Russia, wrong about the Middle East and wrong about the "Arab spring" chaos facing Libya and other North African nations.