The Book on Mitt

When John McCain endorsed Mitt Romney just before the New Hampshire primary, there was some tittering about all the nasty things the Senator from Arizona said about his former rival during the 2008 Republican nominating contest—like when he called Mr. Romney a “phony” in an ad. That was a little embarrassing, especially since the John McCain who ran for president, and lost, was also a “phony” hard-righter.

This is much more embarrassing: Last night the website Buzz Feed posted what looks like Mr. McCain’s entire 2008 opposition-research file on Mr. Romney. (These campaign documents have a funny way of leaking. Just after the 1992 election, The Times’s Michael Kelly wrote about the Clinton campaign’s internal book on how to make Bill seem honest and Hillary a warm and loving wife.)

Journalists have already started combing through the 200-page McCain document (complete with a timeline of Mr. Romney’s life like the ones in Penguin classic editions), and reveling in the odder, lighter details, since much of the information has long been public knowledge. Or maybe not so light, really. Apparently Mr. Romney changed his position on his favorite film from “O Brother Where Art Thou” to “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” How shameless (and not just because he picked “O Brother” in the first place).

If you click through to the document, you’ll see that it’s comprehensive. It includes material on Mr. Romney’s “questionable Republican credentials” and his record at Bain. There’s about a page on Mr. Romney’s hunting that suggests his blasting away at wildlife has been limited to “small varmints.” (Are there large varmints?) And there’s a chapter on his flip-flops, of course. It starts with this quotation from Northeastern University’s William Mayer: “After studying presidential nominations for 30 years, I’ve never seen somebody who has so completely renounced his past record when he decided to run for president.”

I’m not sure I have, either, but what stands out here to me is how basically decent that past, now-renounced record really was. The facts that Mr. McCain’s research team had on file to (presumably) tar Mr. Romney make him seem like an old-fashioned moderate. I know, I know, “moderate” is a bad word.

The file states that, while governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Romney required Catholic hospitals to provide emergency contraception medication to rape victims. He also said health coverage benefits and hospital visitation rights should be provided to gay couples. He increased gun licensing fees. He said he was open to a “regional cap and trade” system to address global warming. He once proposed a 10 percent tax on private donations to political campaigns and also capping spending on elections, abolishing PACs and tightening regulations. He told the Boston Herald that he was an independent during the Reagan administration, and that he was not “trying to return to Reagan-Bush.” OK, so what’s not to like here?

He kind of sounds like President Obama, except for the campaign finance reform part. Admittedly, that comparison probably popped into my head because of Rick Santorum’s new ad, which claims that Mr. Romney is “ just like Obama.”

I have no idea if Mr. Romney believed in what he was doing, what he believes now, or if he has ever really believed anything. I wonder if he knows at this point. But I can say this: There’s a lot in this opposition-research file to make a certain kind of voter long for the pre-flop (does that work out to the “flip” era?) Mr. Romney.