If he wants to be in the 2008 presidential mix, he might benefit from a Washington job with national security dimensions.

A Republican can be elected governor of the bluest state. Indeed,Republicans have held the statehouse in Massachusetts since MichaelDukakis' last year, 1990. Mitt Romney is the inexplicably happyholder of it now. What kind of person is preternaturally cheerfulwhile governing with a legislature in which 34 of 40 senators and 139of 160 House members are Democrats?

"My vetoes count for nothing," he says cheerfully. But, then, heseems to relish heavy political lifting, as in his 1994 race againstSen. Ted Kennedy, which was Kennedy's closest race (58 percent to 41percent) since his initial election in 1962. Politics, says Romney,57, is "kind of like sport for old guys." In …