The Romney presidential campaign elicits uncanny—for Republicans, unnerving—parallels to the last gubernatorial election in California.

Two years ago, Meg Whitman ran for the top job in Sacramento as a star executive and moderate Republican. She led with her biography and muddled her message on economic policy. Ms. Whitman worked at Bain & Co. in the 1980s with Mitt Romney, whom she considers a friend, before making her mark and millions atop eBay. During the campaign for governor, she was even mentioned as a veep possibility one day for Mr. Romney.

The Whitman effort failed on two fronts, as the Hoover Institution's Bill Whalen notes. She couldn't turn her business success into a political plus and ended up coming across, or getting successfully defined, as a cold plutocrat. And she was unable to give voters a clear idea of how she'd fix California's chronic fiscal and economic problems. Jerry Brown won the election by nearly 14 percentage points.

Now, very blue California isn't America, and Mr. Romney—a former governor and second-time presidential candidate—is a more experienced and accomplished politician than his former protégé at Bain. But it's not too late for the lessons of her campaign to sink in.

Mr. Romney has also run on his C.V. and diluted the policy message—bashing China, for example, rather than explaining how he'd revive economic growth. The results are coming in. Starting with Newt Gingrich's attacks on his Bain career and followed by the Obama full-frontal attack over the summer, Mr. Romney isn't seen as sympathetic tycoon. His "likability" numbers show that: 42% of voters have a "very unfavorable" view of him, while 34% have a "very favorable" opinion about President Obama, according to the Economist/YouGov poll this week.