Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Mitt Romney for Losing the 2012 Presidential Election

November 6, 2012: President Barack Obama is re-elected, defeating former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. Romney had run the most dishonest Presidential campaign of all time -- a record that didn't even survive a full election cycle. But Obama won the popular vote, 51.1 percent to 47.2; and the Electoral Vote, 332 to 206.

Going into Election Day, Republicans were sure that Romney was going to win Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. If he had, it would have been a shift of 67 Electoral Votes, making Romney the winner, 273 to 265. But Obama won Florida by 45,000 votes, and both Ohio and Pennsylvania by 50,000. Ohio, which can fairly be called "the Swingiest of Swing States," did not trust the economy, which Obama had rescued after being crashed 4 years earlier by conservative businessmen, to another conservative businessman.

Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Mitt Romney for Losing the 2012 Presidential Election

Here's some reasons that didn't make the cut: The Best of the Rest.

George W. Bush. He hung over the GOP like Jacob Marley's ghost, like Jimmy Carter did over the Democratic Party from 1980 to 1992 (but not afterward, thanks to Bill Clinton, no matter how hard Republicans have since tried), like Herbert Hoover did over the Republican Party from 1932 to 1980, when Ronald Reagan finally liberated them), like Woodrow Wilson did over the Democrats from 1920 to 1932 (when Franklin Roosevelt exorcised the ghost), like the Civil War did over the Democrats from 1864 to 1912 (when Wilson moved them into the 20th Century).

"Miss me yet?" America said, "No."

Voters may have believed that Obama hadn't done enough to restore the economy, but they knew damn well that he didn't cause the crash and the recession. Bush did. Conservative businessmen did. And Romney, as he kept telling us, was a conservative businessman.

Bill Clinton. His Convention speech gave Obama a huge boost, and his campaign appearances in States like Ohio and Florida helped a lot. If Al Gore had swallowed his pride and asked Clinton, then still President, to make so much as 1 joint appearance with him in Miami in the 1st week of November 2000, Gore would have won Florida by such a margin that Jeb Bush couldn't have stolen it, and Gore would have been unquestionably victorious overall.

Seal Team Six. Upon Obama's orders, they killed Osama bin Laden. If they had failed, it would have been for Obama what "Desert One," the failed attempt to rescue the hostages from Iran on April 25, 1980, was to Jimmy Carter. It would have made the Carter-Obama comparisons a lot more honest.

Instead, Obama got a victory that, no matter what Romney and his surrogates said about Benghazi, essentially took foreign policy off the table, because they had no chance to beat Obama on the issue.

Hurricane Sandy. True, every State affected by it was going to go for Obama anyway. But Obama's response, a polar opposite from Bush's on Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 (and, as we have now seen, from Donald Trump's on Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017), and his bipartisan work with Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, made him look like a man who cared enough to help, was flexible enough to reach across the aisle, and competent enough to get things done.

Was Romney flexible? Certainly. Was he competent enough? Possibly. Did he care enough? Don't make me laugh, and if you think he did, recall "the 47 Percent Video." Obama's response to Sandy didn't turn a single State affected by it -- that was unnecessary -- but it helped him nationally.

The Wives. No, this is not a joke about Romney's religion, which used to allow polygamy. Nor did it make evangelical Protestants abandon him for Obama: I guess they'd rather vote for a Mormon than a black liberationist/Muslim/Communist-therefore-atheist. (I wish they'd pick one lie and go with it.)

This is a reference to Michelle Obama and Ann Romney. Ann may have helped "humanize" Mitt with her Convention speech, but thereafter, she acted like a petulant rich chick who thought everyone not rich was beneath her. In contrast, Michelle Obama acted like a fun person who wants you to have fun, too -- and all she asks in return is that you eat right and exercise. She won't force you, as was suggested. Michelle acted like her life would have been complete if Barack loses, or if he'd lost in 2008, or even if he'd never entered politics. Whereas Ann acted like she had to be First Lady.

Having horseback riding as a hobby isn't a bad thing.

But competing as an equestrienne, a rich person's sport,

did not help her image, or her husband's.

We want our First Ladies to appear like living in the White House is nice, but they don't need it. Mamie Eisenhower, Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon, Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter, Barbara Bush, Laura Bush, they all seemed to be regular people. Even Jacqueline Kennedy, who most certainly was not "regular people," didn't act like living in the White House was some divine right of hers.

Nancy Reagan, on the other hand, acted as though it was her divine right. Hillary Clinton often came off as someone who thought so, and her softening of her own image was a big reason why Bill won in 1996, and why she was elected to the Senate in 2000 and came close to the Democratic nomination in 2008. The far right tried to paint Michelle as an entitled woman, which turned out to be ridiculous. Ann really is like that, and that only fed into Mitt's image as an out-of-touch rich guy.

Before I get down to the Top 5, let me take one potential reason off the table: Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan. True, the Congressman from Wisconsin didn't help bring his home State into the Romney column. But that's because, despite a lot of Republicans' hopes, and a few pundits bold predictions, Wisconsin was never going to vote for Romney. Governor Scott Walker's survival of his recall was more of a backlash against the movement to recall him, for not wanting to wait until the next election in November 2014.

Ryan is a far-right extremist. But he's not a reason Romney lost. It was suggested that another "finalist" for the Vice Presidential slot, Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, might have made the difference. No: Romney would still have lost the Electoral Vote if he'd won Ohio. Same with Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. In fact, Romney could have won Ohio and Florida, and he still would have lost, in both the popular vote and the Electoral Vote.

And even if you think Ryan did hurt Romney, remember: Romney chose him. He could have chosen someone else. So if you blame Ryan, you should blame Romney, too.

Now, the Top 5 Reasons:

5. It's the Economy, Stupid. James Carville's 1992 line for Bill Clinton still works. As I said, people still blame Bush and other "conservative businessmen" for causing the bad economy, much more than they blame Obama for not getting back to where it was in mid-2007, let alone where it was in 2000 before the tech bubble burst.

And it was getting better, in spite of all the GOP's obstructionism: Unemployment, which Obama did not cause to go to 10 percent, was now down below 8 percent. 750,000 jobs lost per month became job growth for 32 months in a row. The Dow Jones was down to 6,500 after the crash; it was double that, 13,000, on Election Day.

And people got it: "The massive debt" wasn't Obama's fault, not by a long shot. They accepted the truth that it was due to the tax cuts and the wars that Bush didn't pay for; and the debt that Obama did add on was necessary to clean up the mess Bush left. Blaming Obama for the deficit was like blaming the Yankees' pitching for their 2012 Playoff loss: It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't the problem.

4. The Republican Base. They're the ones who pushed Romney into disavowing his greatest (if not, as I've suggested, "only") accomplishment in his only political job. They're the ones who pushed him into abandoning his pro-choice -- or, as Ted Kennedy called it in their 1994 Senate battle, his "multiple-choice" -- stance on abortion. They're the ones who made him sound like Dick Cheney on foreign policy. They're the ones who pushed him to the hard right on immigration and gay rights, when he'd previously been a moderate on the former, and was at least willing to discuss the latter.

Primary opponents Rick Perry, then Newt Gingrich, and finally Rick Santorum worked so hard to pain Romney as "Massachusetts Moderate Mitt" -- trying to make him sound like John Kerry or, God forbid, Michael Dukakis, and even invoking the State as the only won one in 1972 by the late George McGovern -- that Romney had to come out and not only act like, but actually come out and say he was, someone who was "severely conservative."

"Severely." That one word, more than "I like being able to fire people," or "47 percent," or "Ten thousand bucks?" or even "Let Detroit go bankrupt," may have doomed him. You may not hear any other observer of the election say it. But "severe" has connotations of "bad," "harsh," "harmful." You hear of a man in a hospital being "severely injured," a soldier being "severely wounded."

The lunatics who use religion as a justification for their greed, or as an excuse for bigotry, pushed Romney away from the center-right man he'd been, more or less continuously, from 1994 to 2008. But since it became clear that McCain was not going to win in November 2008, he became "severely conservative" -- until that stopped working, because (as I'll return to later), Obama's campaign machine basically said, "Yeah, he is, and here's what that means."

The last time Romney looked like he had a real chance to win was after the first debate, when Obama looked tentative and underprepared, and Romney sounded like a prepared, reasonable, competent moderate. If he'd been that from the moment he clinched the nomination onward, he would have had a very good chance of winning. But if he'd been that during the Republican Primaries, he wouldn't have gotten out of New Hampshire with his candidacy intact.

Thinking he needed to appease the hard right may also have been a reason why Romney chose Ryan as the Vice Presidential nominee, instead of a more moderate conservative, such as Portman, or Governor Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire.

3. The So-Called "Liberal" Media. In 2000, they let the Bush team paint their man as honest and Gore as a liar. The voices stepping forward to defend Gore and to expose Bush as the real liar, as an intellectual lightweight, as a man monumentally underprepared for the Presidency, were too timid, or courageous enough but without enough power to spread their message.

In 2004, the same thing: The media let Bush lie through his teeth about himself and Kerry, to the point where Kerry (rather than Bush) looked like the elitist who was unfit to command our troops, and Bush looked like an average guy with the strength to lead our nation (both bull).

In 2008, the economic crash made the media's job easier: The facts showed the GOP couldn't be trusted, and McCain's efforts to lie about Obama were halfhearted; he's just not that kind of guy, although the kind of guy he is, isn't someone I could ever vote for.

This time, Romney and his surrogates told lie after lie after lie, and the Obama campaign struck back, saying, "Here's the truth," and showing the truth... and the media told the story. Would that they had done so in 2016 as well, but they didn't. Romney didn't boost their ratings, Trump did.

It never occurs to these candidates to not say things that they know are untrue, or represent their true feelings but could be taken out of context. Instead of blaming the media for telling the story, try blaming yourself for making the story available.

Which leads directly to...

2. James Carter IV. For 32 years, the GOP had been painting his grandfather, Jimmy Carter, a Sunday school teacher and an Annapolis graduate, as a political, military and moral weakling, for letting the excesses of the 1970s be the excesses of the 1970s. Never mind that these things began under Nixon, often as a backlash against his policies, and steamrolled under Gerald Ford. Never mind that Carter could no more control what went on inside the doors at Studio 54 and Plato's Retreat than he could control what went on inside the doors at OPEC meetings.

That's been the line since 1980: Carter is a Democrat, and he's weak, therefore Democrats are weak, they're soft on immorality, soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on defense, soft on Communism, soft on terrorism. Reagan is a Republican, and he's strong, therefore Republicans are strong. It was easy to compare Walter Mondale to Carter in 1984: He was Carter's Vice President. The Carter years were fresh enough in 1988 to make Michael Dukakis "another Jimmy Carter" and have it work.

But after 8 years of a highly (though hardly completely) successful liberal Democratic President, Bill Clinton, the comparison of Obama to Carter, endlessly repeated in conservative opinion pieces, was stupid. Especially since Carter's attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran failed, while Obama's similar attempt to kill Osama bin Laden succeeded.

If either 2012 candidate was "Ronald Reagan" when it came to defending this nation, it was Obama. (Never mind that Reagan's arms sales made Osama bin Laden's rise possible.) No, Romney was no Reagan: Reagan was likeable, Romney is not. And, as Seinfeld's George Costanza taught us, "It's not a lie if you believe it." Reagan said a lot of bull, but he seemed to believe it; Romney couldn't convince people to believe his lies. So Romney was no Reagan, and Obama was no Carter.

So it was appropriate that James Carter, a freelance filmmaker, was the one who filmed that banquet at which Romney denounced "47 percent of Americans" as moochers who the Republicans couldn't reach, and thus didn't have to care about.

James Carter, standing in for his then 88-year-old grandpa, like Banquo's ghost at Macbeth's royal feast, captured the moment, and spread it, and Romney looked like a different Massachusetts man: Charles Emerson Winchester III (played by David Ogden Stiers on M*A*S*H), who once told an investigator for a McCarthyist Congressman, "Sir, I am so conservative, I make you look like a New Dealer."

Romney isn't a very intelligent man, but he has enough brains to realize he didn't want to sound like Charles -- or like another rich guy to whom he was often compared, Thurston Howell III (played by Jim Backus on Gilligan's Island -- and at least Thurston would occasionally loan nice things to the other castaways, and rewrote his will to include them).

It deeply offends Romney when people attack him for having gobs of money, or question whether he got it fairly. But he figured out that he couldn't look like the guy who writes off 47 percent of the country: "I care about 100 percent of Americans." He had to say it. Even though he didn't believe it, and the vast majority of that near-majority didn't believe it.

But if James Carter hadn't been there to film that moment, we never would have known that Romney said it. It would have been as if Nixon's Oval Office tapes had never been revealed until after he completed his 2nd term in January 1977. Instead, the tapes were revealed in July 1973, Nixon was forced to hand them over in August 1974, and he had to resign almost immediately thereafter. And, unlike Nixon, Romney didn't have the option to "burn the tapes." He never had possession, let alone ownership, of the clip. But now, he will have it stuck to him for the rest of his life.

So that's 2 ghosts: George W. Bush, as that of Jacob Marley; and Jimmy Carter, as that of Banquo. You could add a third, that of George Romney, the late former Governor of Michigan, whose 1968 run for President short-circuited, but who really was a moderate Republican -- and released his tax returns in full, unlike his son. We may never find out what Mitt was hiding -- but now, it doesn't matter, because he's lost. Now, it only matters to the historians, if they're curious enough.

Of course, none of the above factors would have made a damn bit of difference if it wasn't for Reason Number 1.

1. Barack Obama. Whatever you think of him, personally or politically, he ran a great campaign. He defined Romney before Romney could define him. He demolished Romney's attempts to define him as socialist, as weak on foreign policy, as someone who "doesn't believe in America," as someone who is "not really one of us."

Moreover, it's very hard to beat an incumbent President, even with an economy that is still growing slowly. The Rose Garden strategy" didn't work for Ford in 1976, or the elder Bush in 1992; but it did work for Reagan in 1984, Clinton in 1996, and the younger Bush in 2004. It worked for Obama in 2012.

Obama not only campaigned to keep his job, he continued to do his job. Whether it was on keeping the government running, or keeping the auto industry afloat, or passing health care reform, or ending the Iraq War, or killing bin Laden, or biding his time instead of diving right into the Arab Spring, people saw him do what Presidents do. Individual observers didn't have to agree with what he was doing, but they still saw him do it, still saw him "be President."

Romney looked like a President, for sure; but he didn't act like a President. Obama was able to show what Michael Douglas (whose wife I still love) said in The American President, after Richard Dreyfus (a liberal in real life) spent most of the movie playing a stand-in for Bob Dole, and closing every speech with, "My name is Bob Rumson, and I'm running for President!" Near the end of the film, Douglas defended his actions and those of his girlfriend, Sydney Ellen Wade, played by Annette Bening, closing with, "This is a time for serious people, Bob, and your 15 minutes are up. My name is Andrew Shepherd, and I am the President."

If Obama hadn't defended himself, and gone on offense, like Clinton -- if he'd rolled over like Kerry, Gore, Dukakis, Mondale, McGovern and Hubert Humphrey -- he'd have been a one-term President, a footnote, "the first black President," and little more. And the gains of his 2nd term wouldn't have happened.

VERDICT: Guilty. You can blame Romney for losing the election. He had his chances, but he didn't really take them.