WASHINGTON - The remarkable revelations from Mitt Romney's strategists about his flailing campaign should give his supporters hope: After all, if the Romney campaign has been this wrong about everything else, then it is almost certainly wrong about the Romney campaign.
Rats don't usually leave a sinking ship until Leonardo DiCaprio has gone under and the Titanic has started to submerge. James Baker didn't really disappear from the doomed 1992 George H.W. Bush campaign until late October. Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace didn't spill their guts about how messed up John McCain's campaign was until it was all over but the voting.
So why are Romney's advisers, consultants and hangers-on spilling the beans to Politico so soon? There are several lifetimes to go until November. There will be three debates, which Romney aced during the primaries. He has more money than President Barack Obama. There is a world of looming catastrophes, some nuclear. There is an economy that won't budge and a president whose favorability ratings, unconventionally high compared with his other numbers, can only go down.
Romney's campaign called Obama's several-point bounce after the convention a "sugar high." That bounce has now faded. This campaign is far from over.
The recriminations are coming ahead of schedule partly because of Romney's screechy putdown last week of Obama over Libya before the Republican presidential nominee knew what he was talking about; a bungled convention; and a sense that Mr. Fix-It can't put meat on the bones of his plan to fix the economy. Outside consultants have been bellyaching for weeks about Romney's campaign.
Now the complaints are coming from the inside, mostly at the expense of the campaign's chief strategist, ad maker and speechwriter, Stuart Stevens. Remember that "Sesame Street" song about how one of these things is not like the others? That thing is Stevens.
The campaign bus is rolling back and forth over Stevens, who was already suspect because he is a social liberal and self- styled intellectual who has written several highly regarded "travel memoirs" to boot. He appeals to that tiny corner of Romney that wishes he were more whimsical. It's the same corner that inspired Romney to turn over part of his primetime moment at the convention to an actor babbling to an empty chair.
According to Politico, Stevens threw out a serviceable acceptance speech a week before the convention. He then threw out the speech he ordered as a replacement (save for that one memorable detail about Romney's father leaving his mother a rose at their bedside table every day), and he and the candidate started writing together. They produced a speech that neglected national security, the obligatory salute to the troops, and left little time for rehearsal.
