If you don't know me by now

It took me a long time to believe that Mitt Romney really didn't know he was going to lose the election. I assumed it was just a ploy to placate the investors. When I saw this photo of Romney's last stop in Pennsylvania I honestly thought he saw his future and this was his last bittersweet moment of public adulation.

[photo via]

But having read about Romney's post-election malaise, I'm beginning to believe he really was clueless. It appears he was so sure he was going to win, he didn't bother to make any plan in case he lost.

Mitt Romney looks out the windows of his beach house here in La Jolla, a moneyed and pristine enclave of San Diego, at noisy construction workers fixing up his next-door neighbor’s home, sending regular updates on the renovation. He devours news from 2,600 miles away in Washington about the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, shaking his head and wondering what if.

However, I do remain convinced that Ann Romney's burning desire to be First Lady was the driving force behind his decision to run in the first place.

By all accounts, the past month has been most difficult on Romney’s wife, Ann, who friends said believed up until the end that ascending to the White House was their destiny. They said she has been crying in private and trying to get back to riding her horses.

I deleted many a tweet saying just this in the last three weeks. It's exactly as I imagined, but it felt too cruel to mention it. It was long clear to me that she enjoyed the celebrity much more than Mitt and thus would take the loss all the harder.

Indeed she did not look all that thankful in their Thanksgiving photo.

Unlike many I've seen, I take no satisfaction in the Romney's sorrow. But I am enormously grateful that he didn't win. And not because Mitt apparently couldn't organize his way out of a long hall with only one door. Of all the reasons a Romney presidency would have been a disaster, this is the biggest one:

“Nothing so unbecame his campaign as his manner of leaving it,” said Robert Shrum, a senior strategist on Democratic presidential campaigns. “I don’t think he’ll ever be a significant figure in public life again.”

Being president requires taking setbacks and losses with grace and equanimity. Mitt simply didn't possess these qualities in the slightest measure. So we didn't just dodge a bullet when we re-elected President Obama. We dodged a megaton nuclear bomb.