There are two reasons why Romney is wise to make himself scarce. The first is that the Republican field has been a colossal embarrassment. The prime culprit is obviously Donald Trump, whose ”birther” antics made him the laughingstock of last weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner — and that was before the news broke of Osama bin Laden’s death, which made him look even smaller. But Trump wasn’t alone in questioning Obama’s citizenship, he was just more vocal about it. Everyone else was diminished by it, too…

The second smart reason for biding his time has to do with Romney himself. He’s not a champion campaigner. The idea of Romney — businessman, governor, adult — frequently outstrips the man himself. An energetic course of early primary campaigning might well have left him worse off, not better. Romney demonstrated in the last election an exceptional incapacity to convince others that he buys his own spin — no small handicap in a politician. Last time around, he tried to overcome this deficiency by spinning even harder. But the pandering and insincerity this engendered proved deadly. One shudders to imagine what he might have said if let loose on the campaign trial in full pander mode at the height of the birther craze as Trump soared in the polls.