Why the GOP (and Democrats) Should Be Thankful for Mitt Romney
Robert Schlesinger

Romney should offer thanks for the weak 2012 GOP field and Barack Obama should be grateful for Romney

Thanksgiving came early to the Schlesinger household this year. It came in the form of a cunning, crying, cooing little boy named Alex, who joined us earlier this month. The new mother, father, and older brother are all feeling thankful. So you will bear with me if I spring the annual giving thanks column a week early this year.

We can start with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who should wake up every morning giving thanks for the quality of the opponents he has drawn in the race for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. Years from now this race will be remembered as consisting of Mitt and the seven dwarfs.

Romney has faced a procession of shooting stars (emphasis decidedly not on "stars"), from Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann to Texas Gov. Rick Perry to inspirational speaker Herman Cain. Not only have these three (and the even less impressive supporting cast rounding out the field) proven incapable of presenting a serious challenge to Romney, but they have proven to be useful foils, helping him present himself in the best light.

Take Perry, the most credibly hyped of the not-Mitts: His fumbling, somnambulant debate performances ("Oops.") helped sink him, but by questioning the constitutionality of Social Security and speaking humanely about illegal immigrants, he let Romney simultaneously solidify his conservative bona fides (by being tough on immigration) and his centrist cred (by defending Social Security, even though he favors privatizing it).

When Perry's moment passed, he was replaced as Romney's chief rival by the half-baked (even before his campaign was consumed by his dazzlingly inept response to charges of sexual harassment) Herman Cain. The former pizza magnate's foreign policy incoherence ("Okay, Libya.") makes Romney look like a savvy elder statesman.

Indeed, the field's greatest collective accomplishment in their never-ending debates has been to make Romney look maximally presidential. As the not-Romneys have risen and imploded, he has contentedly skirted by on the edge of the spotlight, becoming more inevitable. Especially with the GOP's front-loaded primary calendar, every day the not-Romney conservatives fail to coalesce is one day he draws closer to the nomination.

In fact, Republicans should fall down on their knees and give thanks that a plausible candidate has emerged among their presidential contenders -- not that they are, but more on that in a moment.

The party is facing an incumbent whose approval ratings have remained under 50 percent while unemployment remains apparently intractably stuck in the kind of territory ordinarily toxic to incumbents. Under these circumstances, the party out of power needs to take a political Hippocratic oath: First, do no harm.

While robotic and transparently inauthentic, Romney is the kind of inoffensive candidate suited for such an election. He may not electrify but he also won't scare, a quality the ineptitude of the GOP field has allowed him to cultivate. Note his patronizing line of attack that President Obama is nice enough but in over his head. Also note a recent Quinnipiac poll that found Romney to be easily the GOP contender most likable to Democrats.

For a party that has touted long and loud the lessons of 2010, the GOP has forgotten a critical one: People can be scared into re-electing an unpopular incumbent. See Sharron Angle's 2010 defeat at the hands of Harry Reid, whose approval ratings dipped into the 30s and never climbed above the mid-40s.

But the GOP has a fatal flaw that prevents it from embracing its strongest candidate. As New York magazine's Jonathan Chait has written, "Conservatives want to win above all, but it's not the only thing they want. They want to win a philosophically oriented campaign. They want to believe that Americans are voting for their party because they agree with it, not just because the other party was in office during an economic free fall." They want to win the argument, not just the office.

Of course, Republicans aren't the only ones who should be thankful for Romney. Democrats can celebrate that while he is the strongest GOPer, it doesn't mean he is strong. Romney may get the nomination, but it will be grudgingly, from a party that exhausted every alternative before settling. Consider the good luck the White House must be celebrating. Obama's signature achievement -- healthcare reform -- has failed to gain the public approval Democrats had hoped for (the Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported that it had reached a new low in popularity). As Obamacare's policy godfather -- the national law was modeled after his Massachusetts version -- Romney is uniquely unqualified to prosecute the case against it.

And while Obama is rapped for lacking the common political touch, Romney has a special combination of poor interpersonal skills and a tin political ear (see his comment that corporations are people too or his defense of foreclosures). While people believe Obama has his heart in the right place, the location of Romney's heart remains a mystery. His biggest weakness remains his elusive core beliefs, a weakness underscored by the report last week that in 2002 gubernatorial candidate Romney argued to abortion-rights activists that "you need someone like me in Washington."

Someone like whom, exactly? That's a question the Democratic National Committee has already started hammering. I for one will be grateful if it's not a question we have to ponder in the context of a new administration one year from now.