Romney: A mirror with no reflection?

As much as I poke fun at Mitt Romney's bumbling ways, the former Massachusetts governor is no dummy. Far from it. He's a rational, well-educated man, a product of prep schools and Harvard Law (cum laude). I am nearly certain that he is a political moderate in his heart of hearts, probably wonkishly so. And unlike, say, Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann, I don't doubt his sincerity or sanity. Among the GOP clowns to the right of Romney and the jokers to his left, I'd trust only him (and Jon Huntsman) with the nuclear launch codes. Like all gubernatorial or presidential aspirants, Romney is grandly ambitious. And yet -- there doesn't seem to be any "there" there. His academic pedigree is impressive. But for every brilliant Barack Obama, the Ivy League produces many more Gentlemen C's like George W. Bush. Where does Romney fall on the arc that bends toward the White House?

Often, the true measure of a man can be taken in the free verse of his writings, a place where one must play tennis with the net down, as Robert Frost once said. Evidently, Romney's muse was preoccupied with dodging serves. His book, "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness," has been universally panned as, well, unenlightening. "[A] remarkable conflation of conservative shibboleths, paranoid global fantasies and deterministic myopia," is how one unsparing reviewer put it (perhaps a bit unfairly). Sometimes one can glimpse the inner man by perusing his bookshelf. Romney's favorite novel is ... ahem ... L. Ron Hubbard's "Battlefield Earth," a sci-fi soap opera. Don't take my "gasp!" for it. The Economist called it "an unsubtle saga, atrociously written, windy and out of control." Sci-fi magazine Analog trashed it as "a wish-fulfillment fantasy wholly populated by the most one-dimensional of cardboard characters." The Church of Scientology founder's tome was not exactly well received.

Slate's John Dickerson opined that "you simply need a deep level of weird" to like the novel. As in "creepy-Hubbard-ascot-fetish" weird. It's possible that "Battlefield Earth" may speak volumes about Romney and his inner intellectual life, such as it appears. I can't say. I can say that Gov. Romney is like a mirror that eerily reflects nothing back. I listen to his words and study his lantern-jawed face. Yet thus far, all I see is a Hubbardian character from Hollywood's central casting, one who gives me the unsettling feeling that he's running not to be president, but to play one on TV.