Mitt Romney is the Dorian Gray of 2012

The presumed GOP nominee would like to keep the true portrait of his character stashed away while he Etch A Sketches a new public persona. Too late, Mitt

Robert Shrum

As he finally claims the nomination that was his all along, but which was so reluctantly yielded to him, Mitt Romney enters his Etch A Sketch period. He may twist the knobs to try and shift his professed beliefs as easily as the aluminum granules on the screen of one of the last century's most famous toys. But it's hard for the epic flip-flopper to reframe himself again — or it should be.

Romney is only doing what comes naturally to a man who once said he was "better" on gay rights than Ted Kennedy, but then later donated $25,000 to the homophobic National Organization For Marriage — through a conduit that was designed to hide his contribution. Romney's public life across two decades has been a ceaselessly revised Etch A Sketch.

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Robert Shrum has been a senior adviser to the Gore 2000 presidential campaign, the campaign of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and the British Labour Party. In addition to being the chief strategist for the 2004 Kerry-Edwards campaign, Shrum has advised thirty winning U.S. Senate campaigns; eight winning campaigns for governor; mayors of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other major cities; and the Democratic Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. Shrum's writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The New Republic, Slate, and other publications. The author of No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner (Simon and Schuster), he is currently a Senior Fellow at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service.