A Taxing Performance; Romney Fails Campaigning 101 And Authenticates Newt Gingrich

Every politician, every office-holder, every candidate knows the first rule of life in the fish bowl:

Never Create A Second-Day Story

The corollary being:

Get Ahead Of Bad News, Take Control And Move On

Mitt Romney has repeatedly broken this cardinal principle of self-preservation by withholding, caviling, parsing, waffling and otherwise looking dense and making trouble for himself over releasing his tax returns, and now, finally agreeing to let loose of last year's - -but not until Tuesday.

Further stumbling.

Even if his 2010  returns show huge tax payments, a hefty effective percentage and massive charitable donations, the selection of just last year's paperwork begs questions like, "why now?," and "what about returns for 2009, '08, '07, etc?"

For which there are no good answers.

Second-day stories? Make that second-week. At a minimum.

In the Year of the Protester, Occupy Wall Street, the Walker Recall and other grassroots movements and media worldwide against powerful elites and their privileges, Romney chose to behave more like the Bain Capital CEO and less like a seasoned politician connecting with regular people.

He and Walker have shown their arrogance, and self-destructive distance from people, so are paying their pipers.

Walker has triggered an historic recall threatening to boot him from office. His shortcomings are fully exposed.

And how bad a politician is Romeny, setting aside his history of flip-flops from GOP moderalte to Tea Party panderer?

So bad that Romney allowed himself to be defined and brutally out-maneuvered by a cartoonish, over-the-hill and deeply-flawed Newt Gingrich.

Romney is a former Governor, and has been running for President the last seven years. But his performance on something as basic as releasing tax returns and why that was important proves he couldn't win an election for 10th-grade class treasurer.