Romney Needs a New Boss

Peggy Noonan raised some eyebrows earlier this week when she called Romney's campaign incompetent. "I was being polite," she writes in today's Wall Street Journal. "I really meant 'rolling calamity.'" Noonan says almost everyone agreed with her dire outlook, including some midlevel campaign insiders. Some said Boston wouldn't listen to advice. One Romney 2008 veteran said he was a good man with a "tin ear." "No one that I know of defended the campaign, or argued, 'you're missing some of its quiet excellence.'"

What Romney needs, Noonan declares, is a "new CEO." Someone like Reagan campaign manager James Baker III, whose guiding philosophy was that the candidate "can't run the show." His energy should be devoted to campaigning. "He shouldn't be debating what statistic to put on slide four of the Powerpoint presentation. He has to learn to trust others—many others. … Mitt Romney needs to get his head screwed on right in this area." Maybe some advice from Baker himself would do the trick. Read Noonan's full column here. (More Peggy Noonan stories.)