Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has refused to follow in father George Romney‘s footsteps when it comes to releasing his tax returns, but if the Beltway media are paying any attention, he may just have repeated his father’s campaign implosion. George Romney’s 1968 presidential campaign was fatally wounded when the elder Romney told an interviewer he’d been “brainwashed” into supporting the Vietnam War, while Mitt Romney suffered an attack on his own gray matter this week from an unlikely, but trusted, source: prospective First Lady Ann Romney.

Then-Michigan Governor George Romney torpedoed his own candidacy for the Republican nomination for president when, in an interview with Detroit’s Lou Gordon, he offhandedly said he had “had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get” while on a 1965 trip to Vietnam, a reference to the sales job the generals and U.S. diplomats had done on him:

George Romney slid from an 11 point deficit in the polls to 26 points down the next month, and would eventually drop out of the race trailing Richard Nixon by 44 points.

Manchurian Candidate idiocy notwithstanding, even Romney’s clear intent with that remark, that he had been persuaded by a forceful PR campaign, made it damaging, but the combination was devastating.

That gaffe began on what was the localest of local stations, Detroit’s UHF channel 50, WKBD, and took a little while to get going.

Similarly, prospective First Lady Ann Romney gave an interview to local Nevada CBS affiliate KTVN, on Thursday, in which she launched what ought to be a far more devastating attack on her husband than the “gotcha” brainwashing remark. Mrs. Romney told KTVN’s Wendy Damonte that her “biggest concern” if husband Mitt were elected president “obviously would just be for his mental well-being.”





As you can see, Mrs. Romney went on to express confidence in Mitt Romney’s “ability, in his decisiveness, in his leadership skills, in his understanding of the economy,” as long as he doesn’t, you know, crack under the pressure, which is a big concern.

That’s as devastating a soundbite as I’ve ever heard from a political opponent, let alone a political spouse. Even Bill Burton, whose Priorities USA SuperPAC has been going at Mitt like a pit bull on Lady Gaga’s meat dress since early last year, hasn’t suggested Mitt will crack up under the pressure of the presidency. Yet. If Burton isn’t already cutting an ad using this clip, he really ought to be.

There’s plenty of material, from Romney’s many paranoid declarations (most hilariously that he feared some sort of action by the White House to “shut down” his secret field trip to Solyndra. I’m not kidding.), to pretty much any clip of Romney laughing, to his loopy assessments of tree heights and lakespotting, to his recent remarks to HuffPo’s Jon Ward, who asked Romney if he would be campaigning more extensively. Romney replied, “Ha, ha. We’re in the stretch, aren’t we? Look at those clouds. It’s beautiful. Look at those things.”

There’s also a deep undercurrent of paranoia and delusion running throughout that hidden camera tape that’s already been so damaging to Romney.

The only thing that could save Romney is the media’s knee-jerk reticence to involve political spouses (who aren’t Michelle Obama) in what could be perceived as a political attack. This is different, though. Mitt Romney’s mental state is one of the few areas in which Ann Romney is a bona fide subject matter expert, so if she says she’s concerned about his mental well-being, that despite the wonderful qualities she sees in him, she’s not sure he’s emotionally up to the job, it’s up to the media to report on that, and to follow up on it. We already know campaigning is hard; presidenting is harder. When that 3 am phone call comes in, Americans need to know their president won’t be curled up in a fetal ball whispering to himself about lakes and trees and all the pretty clouds.

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