Within several minutes of announcing for president, Romney flipped, flopped, and then did a triple summersault on the Second Amendment, on abortion, on immigration, on the odious McCain-Feingold, and other issues.

His boosters say his business background is a plus but as anyone who watched “Citizen Kane” can tell you, it’s easy to make a lot of money when you inherit a lot of money.

Even the talking heads don’t say that Romney will bring along the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Having a son at college in Boston, I can attest that it is very similar to Beijing, only more repressive, but cleaner.

Some tried the Michigan argument because his father was governor there when Lyndon Johnson was President!? What? That is so last century.

In fact, the only running mate who ever delivered a state was Johnson, in 1960, and anybody who has been in politics for more than 15 minutes knows LBJ and his cronies stole the state. No running mate in the modern era ever delivered their home state.

For McCain, Romney ambition reminds many of what my old friend Lyn Nofziger said of Don Rumsfeld going on the ticket with Ronald Reagan in 1980. “Rummy would be fine, but you realize we’ll have to hire a food taster for Reagan!”

Romney is a fine man and has a very attractive family, but what McCain needs is a ticket of two stable adults to offset the perceived immaturity of Obama. McCain needs to unify his party while communicating seriousness to the American people.

He needs to look outside of Washington for someone unsullied by the unprincipled GOP. A stable, reformist conservative with a track record of walking the walk and not just talking the talk.

There are still Americans who believe the presidency is serious business and how a nominee picks his running mate is the first act in which he can communicate to the voters that he is serious about the business of the presidency.