Gary Wills compares Romney to other men who have lost the presidency and the comparison is brutal.  What differentiates Romney from the likes of Goldwater, McGovern, Carter, Kerry and Dukakis?  They didn’t sacrifice their principles and disavow earlier convictions to get the nomination.  As a result they continued to play a part on the U.S. and world scene. Unlike Romney:

None of these men engineered a wholesale repudiation of their former principles. Romney, on the contrary, did not let earlier positions grow—enriching, say, his experience of health care legislation to give his approach greater refinement or focus. He just tried to erase the whole matter from his record. He began with a promise to be to the left of Senator Kennedy on gay rights and abortion—and ended up to the right of Strom Thurmond. He decided to hire more expensive lawn care only on the principle of “I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake, I can’t have illegals.”

Now I don’t think that Romney actually disavowed earlier convictions because I believe he is a shallow man who had none to begin with.  Willard Mitt Romney’s entire political career is a non stop Etch A Sketch moment – he is a political chameleon who took on whatever colors he thought were required at the time.  As a result he won’t join the distinguished losers who continued to serve their country and the world.  Like a good sociopath he will:

What public service do we expect from Mitt Romney? He will no doubt return to augmenting his vast and hidden wealth, with no more pesky questions about where around the world it is stashed, or what taxes (if any) he paid, carefully sheltered from the rules his fellow citizens follow.

The country and the world dodged a bullet when this modern day Gordon Gecko was defeated.

Cross posted at Middle Earth Journal.