Considering the Romney threat

To Obama's re-election prospects:

Mitt Romney has quietly become a much more formidable candidate. If he gets the GOP nod, 2012 may feel like a showdown between the CEO and the professor. Guess who voters will pick with 9 percent unemployment? I’ve long had mixed feelings about Romney. On the one hand, his brains, business chops and government experience (including that bipartisan universal health-care reform in Massachusetts) make him instantly credible in the chair. His straight-from-central-casting looks don’t hurt either. Even my mother-in-law thinks he’s dreamy.