Whether it's true or not, senior advisers to President Obama's re-election campaign believed, long before presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney picked Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, that Romney had been oddly and helpfully "collaborative" in making the Obama case against him. That's the word David Axelrod used in an interview with National Journal to describe Romney's unwillingness to pitch a strong national narrative about his life, his plans for the nation or how he understood the economic travails of the middle class.

Axelrod found Romney's dug-in refusal to release more tax returns (only 2010 so far, with 2011 coming) similarly helpful. Axelrod even thought Romney's overseas trip helped Obama reinforce a not-quite-ready-for-prime-time meme.