CAN THE GOP WIN THE PRESIDENCY WITH TWO VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES ON THE TICKET?

Yesterday, when I was pondering the whole "private sector is doing fine" business, I watched a clip of Mitt Romney's response -- not just the fifteen seconds in which he says the problem in this country is that we have too damn many firefighters and teachers, but an extended clip in which, about two minutes in, he mocks President Obama's assertion at a recent fund-raiser that he's accomplished a lot of things on his personal to-do list:





The first part of the clip (the bit about firefighters and teachers) is fist-shaking Randian self-righteousness. The bit about the to-do list is out-and-out mockery -- it's practically Palinesque. You half-expect Romney to say, "How's that to-do list workin' out for ya?" And though he can't crank up the relish of mockery that's mean-girl Palin's stock in trade, he clearly enjoys being the insult comic.

You think Romney never shows his human side? This is his human side. It ain't pretty.

I say this all the time, but it looks to me as if he's going to run an entire presidential campaign without ever attempting to be uplifting. In this speech, he sounds like a VP candidate -- he's his own attack dog.

If he keep[s this up, that means the GOP ticket will have two vice presidential candidates on it. Will that work? It's possible that one VP candidate (Romney) will be the attack dog while the other VP candidate (Portman? Pawlenty?) will be the safe, dull nonentity. Or maybe it'll be two Palins -- Romney/Christie.

The third possibility is that he'll reverse the ticket -- he'll pick, say, Marco Rubio, and hope Rubio will be the guy with the uplifting backstory and the Kennedyesque pretty-boy presidential appeal.

But if not, he's going to run a dispiriting, snarling, cackling campaign. Has America ever voted for that in a presidential election? For a Nixon who doesn't even offer "Bring Us Together"?