Mitt Romney is an honorable, decent human being. Let's just state that right off the bat. He means well, he has a wonderful family, he has been a wonderful father, a wonderful husband, and a most competent businessman, and I truly believe that he has the best intentions and best hopes for his country.

But I could not help be pained watching Wednesday's Republican debate, and watch Romney - who I truly believe to be an honorable gentleman - in a political arena that he simply is not prepared for. If he were prepared for it, he would have ruthlessly and aggressively shot back at John McCain for his various distortions of Romney's record, particularly Romney's stance on the Iraq surge. But instead, Romney could only shoot back that John McCain had gotten "three pinocchios" from various sources with regard to his distortions of Romney's record. This speaks of a political naivete of monumental and symphonic proportions.

John over at Powerline really sums up Romney's problem:

I didn't see tonight's debate, and haven't read any account of it other than Paul's. (I deleted the 50 or 60 emails that came in to my Blackberry from the campaigns.) So I have nothing to say about tonight's event, but do have some broader comments on the general subject of politics and business.

I know many successful businessmen, and a number of successful politicians. In my experience, businessmen generally think that they are smarter and tougher than politicians. "Smarter" goes without saying, "tougher" means that they interpret politicians' equivocations and changes of position as weakness. I think the businessmen are wrong on both counts. Successful politicians, on the average, are both "smarter," i.e. abler, and tougher than successful businessmen.

In the business world, Mitt Romney is as successful as anyone can be. No one attains his level of achievement without enormous talents and an oversized ego. Yet, compared to John McCain, Romney is modest and self-effacing. As a businessman among politicians, he is a boy among men.

Politics attracts the most ambitious and ruthless of men. (That's the real reason why, at its upper levels, politics, much more than business, is dominated by men, not women.) In many countries, men with unnatural appetites go into politics because if they are successful, they will be able to have the people they don't like shot. Here in America, we don't shoot our political losers, and politics is not just a variety of organized crime. Still, many of the same sorts of people are attracted to it.

Businessmen, in my experience, are generally more idealistic than politicians. Businessmen really do make deals with a handshake. No one would dream of doing that with Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi or the Clintons. Turning a businessman loose in the political world is basically a mismatch. That's the sense I get of McCain's reaction to having Romney as his last serious rival. He can't believe his good fortune; Romney is an amateur. McCain can poke him in the eye, knee him in the groin, and the rule-following businessman has no idea how to respond.

I don't view this as an argument in Romney's favor. As President, he wouldn't be dealing with honorable, law-abiding businesspeople. He would be going up against the Vladimir Putins, Osama bin Ladens and Harry Reids of the world. This is not a game for amateurs. I think we should recognize that professional politicians bring important experience and skills to the table, and that one of those skills is the ability to knee an opponent in the groin and get away with it. It's not pretty. But, compared to politics, business is beanbag, and politics is the game the Republican nominee will have to play.

Romney must have been absoutely - and justifiably - flabbergasted at McCain's attack on him for his stance on the surge in Iraq. But the fact that he was so surprised, and his indignant and amateurish response to that attack, when he should have gone completely on the aggressive offensive, speaks volumes as to why John McCain is now the most likely Republican nominee for the presidency.