The Olympics Delay Word on Mitt Romney’s Destiny

When he was campaigning for the Massachusetts governorship and the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney often cited his experience in saving the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City as a reason he’d make the best candidate.

So it’s ironic that the 2008 Beijing Olympics might delay the announcement of John McCain’s running mate until the first week of September.

The Games giveth, and the Games taketh away.

The running mate announcements typically come a couple of weeks before each party’s convention. This year, both McCain and Barack Obama are nervous that the fickle electorate will be too distracted by the soft-focus athlete backstory packages narrated by Bob Costas to concern themselves with any election-related news.

Now both parties are dancing around each other in the hopes of making their announcements at a time to maximize the endless discussion by pundits on cable news, which will probably come after the Games end in August. This leaves Mitt and all his fellow contestants in the veep-stakes in limbo for another month.