If the White House gets its political way, “trust” will be a word President Obama and his surrogates use in the next few weeks as often as Obama has talked about “fairness,” and Mitt Romney, once dubbed as hollow to the core, will increasingly be ID’d as a card-carrying ultra-conservative who bobbles into Etch A Sketch moments because his core is causing him problems.

There are six words at the end of that last sentence that cry out for quote marks, but the deep-background rules imposed Monday at the White House preclude the use of direct quotes or identifying the three “senior administration officials” who sought to lead reporters into the next phase of the campaign as well as strategy for Congress’ return to Washington.

Romney’s core has been filling in with far-right positions on education, gay marriage, immigration, Afghanistan, Iraq, taxes, the economy, energy and the environment, one of the officials asserted. Those policies, together with Romney’s remarkable degree of secrecy (imagine more quote marks) when it comes to his personal and professional approaches to problem-solving, will poison voters’ trust in the governance Romney would bring to the White House, the officials added.