So Mittens announced today that he wouldn’t be running for President. I’m actually sorry; I was so looking forward to seeing Mr. Privilege retool himself as a champion of the downtrodden. It would have been fun.

The  “I will not run” statement reveals a lot about the man. He has decided to magnanimously step aside and give “other leaders in the Party the opportunity to become our next nominee,” even though he believes he had it in the bag:

Let me give you some of my thinking. First, I am convinced that with the help of the people on this call, we could win the nomination. Our finance calls made it clear that we would have enough funding to be more than competitive. With few exceptions, our field political leadership is ready and enthusiastic about a new race. And the reaction of Republican voters across the country was both surprising and heartening. I know that early poll numbers move up and down a great deal during a campaign, but we would have no doubt started in a strong position. One poll out just today shows me gaining support and leading the next closest contender by nearly two to one. I also am leading in all of the four early states. So I am convinced that we could win the nomination, but fully realize it would have been difficult test and a hard fight.

I also believe with the message of making the world safer, providing opportunity to every American regardless of the neighborhood they live in, and working to break the grip of poverty, I would have the best chance of beating the eventual Democrat nominee, but that is before the other contenders have had the opportunity to take their message to the voters.

In brief, I am the superior candidate, the one America wants and needs, the one who would most likely whip whatever the Democrats nominate, but I am stepping aside to let lesser men take a shot at it, because that’s the kind of guy I am.

Mark Halperin apparently had insider information, and his assessment doesn’t make Mittens look any better. Mittens thought  he ought to run, because by golly he would make a great President, and he felt downright obligated as a patriot to jump in there and take the White House and make America a better place. It was his duty. And he could win it this time, too; he just had to persuade a few more of the little folks that he really cares about them , too, in an abstract sort of way.

On the negative side, winning the nomination would be hard, because all those other GOP candidates will say unkind things about him, and in the meantime Hillary Clinton is going to take the Dem nomination in a cakewalk and will enter the general election unscathed. Not that he couldn’t beat her, of course, but it would be hard. He’d have to fight for it. And even though he is far and away the best man and the front runner for the GOP nomination, and he felt obligated to serve his country as head of it, because nobody but him understands how to do anything.  he might lose. So he quit.

Seriously; that’s what Halperin says of Mittens’s decision, in a lot more words. What a pathetic weenie.

Compare/contrast Crazy Bill Serman’s  “I will not accept if nominated, and will not serve if elected,” which were his actual words, not the “If nominated I will not run ….” thing. His troops called him Crazy Bill, but in fact Sherman was a man who had been through hell and seen and done hard things, and he was a man with few illusions. Pretty much the opposite of Mittens.

But if Mittens truly is out … and it wouldn’t surprise me if his faux noblesse oblige called him back into the Clown Car in a few months — we may luck out and get Lindsey Graham , who is exploring the possibility of running on his sterling record of — get this, children — foreign policy.

I know. Kind of takes your breath away, huh?

Simon Maloy reviews part of Sen. Graham’s record as a foreign policy genius at Salon. For some of the senator’s more recent geniius, see Maloy’s  America’s most terrified senator: Lindsey Graham’s never-ending doomsday visions from last September.