Peggy Noonan spends most of this week's column bashing President Obama and the Democrats ("You didn't build that" again?), and using Bill Clinton as a stick to beat the president. I'll spare you the details.
Then she tells us this -- and yes, that word is italicized in the original:
In Mitt Romney's campaign -- well, his supporters had high hopes for his overseas trip. It would show his size, show that he can move in the world, that he has the heft, weight and ease to be international. He didn't do as badly as his critics say, but he probably didn't do himself much good....."Size"? Is that what Romney seems to lack?
The trip to Israel, with the high-ticket fund-raiser and the casino magnate and the definitive speech that gave him no room to move as president, when presidents always need room to move this way and that, plus the unnecessary put-down of the Palestinians, which wasn't needed to make his point -- all of it seemed lacking in size, in heft. Panderish.
Ahem. I guess what Noonan is saying -- to use a formulation she gleefully delighted in when it was applied to George W. Bush in 2004 -- is that Romney hasn't got two of 'em.
