Mitt Romney keeps emphasizing his relative lack of governing experience, and in each telling his political virginity gets a bit more pure than in the last. At last week's presidential debate, he declared, "I spent my life in the private sector, not in government." Today, Romney went further:

“Why am I in it? It’s not the next step of my career, by the way,” he said when asked why he’s running for president. “I don’t have a political career.”

I believe Jonathan Last put it best: "Mitt Romney would have been a career politician too, if only voters would have let him." The man lost a Senate race in 1994, eked out a win for governor in 2002, abandoned his office in 2006 when polls showed him trailing, and lost a presidential race in 2008, from which he's been running continuously since.

Romney doesn't have a political career in the same sense that William Hung doesn't have a music career. It's not because he's above it.