As long as I'm beating up on...

...poor ol' Mitt Romney, I might as well pile it on. In a piece yesterday in the New Republic, Jonathan Chait wrote:

“Basically, it’s the same thing,’’ said Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist who advised the Romney and Obama administrations on their health insurance programs. A national health overhaul would not have happened if Mitt Romney had not made “the decision in 2005 to go for it. He is in many ways the intellectual father of national health reform.’’

Now if I were advising Romney (and my phone isn't exactly ringing off the hook), I'd tell him that instead of all the mental gymnastics of how Romneycare is different from Obamacare (and better), why not just get out in front on the issue? Why not say something like, "I did health care reform in Massachusetts when the president was still in the Illinois state senate. I'd be a better leader!" That way you could claim to be both competent and innovative.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy privately criticized Richard Nixon for talking down to voters. Romney would do well to listen to that.