NO MYSTERY

In the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan, the paradigm of unintentional hilarity, writes a furrowed brow analysis of Mitt Romney‘s inadequacies. “Here’s one tough, cool-eyed report on what is happening in the presidential race,” Noonan writes. “It’s from veteran Republican pollster, now corporate strategist, Steve Lombardo of Edelman public relations in Washington. Mr. Lombardo worked in the 2008 Romney campaign. He’s not affiliated with any candidate. This is what he wrote Thursday morning, and what he sees is pretty much what I see. “The pendulum has swung toward Obama.” Mitt Romney has “a damaged political persona.” He is running behind in key states like Ohio and Virginia and, to a lesser extent, Florida. The president is reversing the decline that began with his “You didn’t build that” comment. For three weeks he’s been on a roll. The wind’s at his back.”

Well–yeah! That’s what’s happening, and it doesn’t take the Oracle of Delphi, or even the Oracle of Edelman, to see it. Romney’s flaws were visible months ago. It’s true, his recent howlers have been unforced errors of such singular significance that we haven’t seen since President Ford insisted that Soviet-controlled Poland was free, or President Carter revealed that he discussed nuclear decisions with his daughter Amy, and no one could have predicted them. But Noonan, in her earnest high school student way, quotes Lombardo’s exegesis point by point, noting that Romney came out of the primaries a damaged candidate, and that the Democrats defined Romney before he had a chance to define himself, and so on, as though one could pinpoint a batter’s untimely pop-up or a fielder’s costly error as the specific reasons why a team didn’t win the title. But doing so is like looking at a bunch of dead trees and coming to the tough, cool-eyed conclusion that we have a dead forest on our hands. The flaws and mistakes haven’t prevented Romney from doing better; the flaws and mistakes are Romney.

Were Noonan as clear-eyed about these things that she pretends to be, she would have realized nine months ago, when she looked at the array of Republicans who were offering themselves to the nation, that there was no president getting out of that clown car. Mitt Romney was a good enough candidate to outlast nitwits like Cain and Bachmann, and the passion play that is Newt Gingrich. He was very lucky that Rick Perry shot himself in the foot, very lucky that Rick Santorum couldn’t scrape Gingrich off the bottom of his shoe fast enough, and tremendously lucky that Mike Huckabee, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie all declined to run. But Romney’s stiffness, his tin ear, his corporate princeliness, and above all, his astonishingly naked emptiness have been obvious for literally years.

Fortunately for Romney, Noonan’s belief that his campaign is “a rolling calamity” doesn’t mean that the election is over. Taking a good long peer into the abyss, Noonan has discerned a path to the presidency: Romney just needs to get the great James Baker or a damn good facsimile to come in and the last minute and rescue this campaign. Hah! Someone should make it clear to Peggy that there will be no Man or Horseback performing last minute heroics in this campaign–and more to the point, someone should ask her if she would really want that to happen? After all she’s seen, does she really think Mitt Romney has what it takes to be president? Does she really think Romney measures up to the sainted Ronald Reagan or her beloved George H.W. Bush?

Here’s another question that she should take a tough, cool-eyed look at before answering: can this Republican party as it is presently constituted–in thrall to the radical right and to the radical rich, with its difficulties including minorities and immigrants–ever expect to win the presidency?