Were We Wanting Someone Like Him All Along?

Way back in 2011 (fully a year before the 2012 presidential election) we questioned whether or not Mitt Romney, who became the eventually 2012 GOP nominee, was tough enough to win and tough enough to be president.
We were quite concerned about it. We actually asked if he was "too nice" to be president.
Even then, we sensed that people were thirsting for a scrappier candidate -- a real fighter. Maybe the country wasn't quite ready for a bolder, more vivid, more bellicose contender like Trump but we could already begin to see the handwriting on the wall -- with a little help from Kathleen Parker, a respected columnist and commentator Michael Medved. Here's what we wrote:

Kathleen Parker has a fine column at the Washington Post in which she basically asks: Is Mitt Romney too nice to be president? She notes that it was Romney who rescued the hopelessly baffled and/or forgetful Rick Perry during last night's GOP debate. We're wondering the same thing.
Here's an excerpt from Parker's column:

He’s a nice guy in a season of nastiness, a trait that may also be his greatest political failing.
Michael Medved, trying to figure out why Republicans don’t love Romney, pointed to his lack of anger. These are angry times and people want their leader to be ticked off, surmised Medved. He may be right, both in theory and in his conclusion: This passion for anger is not good for the country. . . .
He seems preternaturally unflappable, which to some is too robotic, not-quite-human. We like some fallibility in our leaders and flaws in our protagonists. Perhaps Romney would benefit from a slight imperfection or some other handicap over which he has struggled.

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