Feels good, doesn’t it?

I have to say, though, that Rupert Murdoch’s whining about Romney really bugs me. He’s acting like he got sold a bill of goods, except he knew exactly what he was getting with Romney and he was apparently just fine with it until he wasn’t. The GOP field this year was unusual in that almost all the frontrunners were known quantities. You had Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann, known cranks. Rick Santorum was a known fringe view holder/punchline. Newt Gingrich was a liar, hypocrite and phony, and Mitt Romney was…actually pretty much the same, albeit with less bombast and more actual knowledge (presumably). The only one who wasn’t a known quantity was Rick Perry, who was supposed to be a tough-talkin’ Texan cowboy who was going to shake everything up, like John Wayne, and instead wound up being like the pitiable clown from one of those John Wayne Westerns that he has to save in the second act.

I really just don’t see how anyone could be surprised by how Mitt has conducted himself since locking up the nomination. I sure haven’t. Romney to date has been largely focused on the economy and jobs, but he hasn’t really presented any plans to remedy these problems because he can’t. So he’s played it safe, backing off ideological arguments in pursuit of the most useful angle to win the election. Since Romney isn’t all that great a politician he’s allowed himself to be diverted onto other subjects like foreign policy and healthcare, detours in which he’s largely embarrassed himself because he doesn’t have his patter on those topics down very well. In general, he’s shied away from making an ideological case, perhaps because he knows the public wouldn’t buy it from him. He’s not very well-liked, but he’s definitely in the game vs. Obama in spite of all this. At this point, I think he’s at a small disadvantage against Obama in terms of the fundamentals, and will probably need some sort of external event to break his way to beat him. The mediocre economy alone, the polls seem to show, isn’t likely to be enough.

But, considering that Romney’s primary campaign was all about how he had been a job cremator creator at Bain and how he saved the Olympics ten years ago, rather than his vision for the country, I find it baffling that anyone would write this:

The Romney campaign thinks it can play it safe and coast to the White House by saying the economy stinks and it’s Mr. Obama’s fault. We’re on its email list and the main daily message from the campaign is that “Obama isn’t working.” Thanks, guys, but Americans already know that. What they want to hear from the challenger is some understanding of why the President’s policies aren’t working and how Mr. Romney’s policies will do better.

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is assailing Mr. Romney as an out-of-touch rich man, and the rich man obliged by vacationing this week at his lake-side home with a jet-ski cameo. Team Obama is pounding him for Bain Capital, and until a recent ad in Ohio the Romney campaign has been slow to respond.

Team Obama is now opening up a new assault on Mr. Romney as a job outsourcer with foreign bank accounts, and if the Boston boys let that one go unanswered, they ought to be fired for malpractice.

***

All of these attacks were predictable, in particular because they go to the heart of Mr. Romney’s main campaign theme—that he can create jobs as President because he is a successful businessman and manager. But candidates who live by biography typically lose by it. See President John Kerry.

All this guy ever ran on was biography! And you knew that going in, Rupert. Murdoch is one of the few people who could really have harmed Romney during the primaries if he’d wanted to, but like most powerful conservatives he realized that Romney was the best of a bad field and went with electability. Now he’s realizing that he supported someone…who’s only worried about getting elected! If you’d wanted an ideologue, Rupe, you could have actually made that happen. So save the complaints.