If Mitt Romney loses his run for the White House, a turning point will have been his decision Monday to absolve President Obama of raising taxes on the middle class. He is managing to turn the only possible silver lining in Chief Justice John Roberts's ObamaCare salvage operation—that the mandate to buy insurance or pay a penalty is really a tax—into a second political defeat. 
 
 Appearing on MSNBC, close Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom was asked by host Chuck Todd if Mr. Romney "agrees with the president" and "believes that you shouldn't call the tax penalty a tax, you should call it a penalty or a fee or a fine?" 
 
 "That's correct," Mr. Fehrnstrom replied, before attempting some hapless spin suggesting that Mr. Obama must be "held accountable" for his own "contradictory" statements on whether it is a penalty or tax. Predictably, the Obama campaign and the media blew past Mr. Fehrnstrom's point, jumped on the tax-policy concession, and declared the health-care tax debate closed. 
 
 Assistant editorial page editor James Freeman on the GOP's muddled message over whether the individual mandate constitutes a tax. Photo: Associated Press 
 
 For conservative optimists who think Mr. Fehrnstrom misspoke or is merely dense, his tax absolution gift to Mr. Obama was confirmed by campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul, who tried the same lame jujitsu spin. In any event, Mr. Fehrnstrom is part of the Boston coterie who are closest to Mr. Romney, and he wouldn't say such a thing without the candidate's approval. 
 
 In a stroke, the Romney campaign contradicted Republicans throughout the country who had used the Chief Justice's opinion to declare accurately that Mr. Obama had raised taxes on the middle class. Three-quarters of those who will pay the mandate tax will make less than $120,000 a year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The Romney high command has muddied the tax issue in a way that will help Mr. Obama's claims that he is merely taxing rich folks like Mr. Romney. And it has made it that much harder for Republicans to again turn ObamaCare into the winning issue it was in 2010. 
 
 Why make such an unforced error? Because it fits with Mr. Romney's fear of being labeled a flip-flopper, as if that is worse than confusing voters about the tax and health-care issues. Mr. Romney favored the individual mandate as part of his reform in Massachusetts, and as we've said from the beginning of his candidacy his failure to admit that mistake makes him less able to carry the anti-ObamaCare case to voters. 
 
 Mr. Romney should use the Supreme Court opinion as an opening to say that now that the mandate is defined as a tax for the purposes of the law, he will work to repeal it. This would let Mr. Romney show voters that Mr. Obama's spending ambitions are so vast that they can't be financed solely by the wealthy but will inevitably hit the middle class. 
 
 Democrats would point to the Massachusetts record, but Mr. Romney could reply that was before the Supreme Court had spoken, that he had promised Bay Staters not to raise taxes, and so now the right policy is to repeal the tax along with the rest of ObamaCare. The tragedy is that for the sake of not abandoning his faulty health-care legacy in Massachusetts, Mr. Romney is jeopardizing his chance at becoming President. 
 
 Perhaps Mr. Romney is slowly figuring this out, because in a July 4 interview he stated himself that the penalty now is a "tax" after all. But he offered no elaboration, and so the campaign looks confused in addition to being politically dumb. 
 
 This latest mistake is of a piece with the campaign's insular staff and strategy that are slowly squandering an historic opportunity. Mr. Obama is being hurt by an economic recovery that is weakening for the third time in three years. But Mr. Romney hasn't been able to take advantage, and if anything he is losing ground. 
 
 The Romney campaign thinks it can play it safe and coast to the White House by saying the economy stinks and it's Mr. Obama's fault. We're on its email list and the main daily message from the campaign is that "Obama isn't working." Thanks, guys, but Americans already know that. What they want to hear from the challenger is some understanding of why the President's policies aren't working and how Mr. Romney's policies will do better. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is assailing Mr. Romney as an out-of-touch rich man, and the rich man obliged by vacationing this week at his lake-side home with a jet-ski cameo. Team Obama is pounding him for Bain Capital, and until a recent ad in Ohio the Romney campaign has been slow to respond. 
 
 Team Obama is now opening up a new assault on Mr. Romney as a job outsourcer with foreign bank accounts, and if the Boston boys let that one go unanswered, they ought to be fired for malpractice. 
 
 *** 
 
 All of these attacks were predictable, in particular because they go to the heart of Mr. Romney's main campaign theme—that he can create jobs as President because he is a successful businessman and manager. But candidates who live by biography typically lose by it. See President John Kerry. 
 
 The biography that voters care about is their own, and they want to know how a candidate is going to improve their future. That means offering a larger economic narrative and vision than Mr. Romney has so far provided. It means pointing out the differences with specificity on higher taxes, government-run health care, punitive regulation, and the waste of politically-driven government spending. 
 
 Mr. Romney promised Republicans he was the best man to make the case against President Obama, whom they desperately want to defeat. So far Mr. Romney is letting them down. 
 
 Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page 9 ||||| Mr. Murdoch’s dim view of Mr. Romney points to a palpable disconnect between the two men, one that has existed since Mr. Romney’s first run for president four years ago, people who know them both said. More than a half-dozen friends and advisers to the two, speaking mostly anonymously to reveal private and frank conversations, said the Murdoch-Romney relationship could be summed up simply: They do not have much of one. 
 
 They have met only a handful of times. Their lukewarm feelings toward each other stem from their encounter at a meeting of The Journal editorial board in 2007, when Mr. Romney visited to pitch himself as the most capable conservative candidate about two months before the Iowa caucuses. 
 
 Romney and Journal staff members who attended said that despite being deeply prepared and animated — particularly on his love for data crunching — Mr. Romney failed to connect with either Mr. Murdoch or The Journal’s editorial page editor, Paul A. Gigot. Instead of articulating a clear and consistent conservative philosophy, he dwelled on organizational charts and executive management, areas of expertise that made him a multimillionaire as the head of his private equity firm, Bain Capital . 
 
 At one point, Mr. Romney declared that “I would probably bring in McKinsey,” the management consulting firm, to help him set up his presidential cabinet, a comment that seemed to startle the editors and left Mr. Murdoch visibly taken aback. 
 
 The Journal’s write-up of that meeting would later glibly refer to Mr. Romney as “Consultant in Chief.” 
 
 Mr. Romney followed up later in the campaign with a second meeting in Mr. Murdoch’s office, but that, too, failed to light a spark. “I don’t think he ever got excited about Romney,” said one associate of Mr. Murdoch’s. 
 
 By the time the first Republican primaries of 2012 were closing in, Mr. Romney met again with The Journal’s editorial board. Mr. Murdoch sat in. “America doesn’t need a manager. America needs a leader,” Mr. Romney told the board. He wore a suit, which he changed out of for a more casual appearance on David Letterman ’s show that evening. And at one point, according to a Journal staff member, he said lightheartedly, “I hope I’m getting better at this.” 
 
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 The Romney campaign felt the meeting went well — so well that it was surprised when The Journal kept hammering him, reprising its complaints about his “inability, or unwillingness, to defend conservative principles.” 
 
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 Fundamentally, Mr. Romney and Mr. Murdoch are very different. Mr. Romney is said to respect Mr. Murdoch as a visionary business mind and deeply admire how he built the company he inherited from his father into a $60 billion global media power. But a teetotaling Mormon from the Midwest and a thrice-married Australian who publishes photos of topless women in one of his British newspapers are bound to have very different world views. 
 
 Mr. Murdoch’s wariness about Mr. Romney is similar to the way many Republican primary voters initially felt about the candidate. Mr. Murdoch wanted anybody else, and could not resist getting swept up in the flavor-of-the-week fickleness that characterized this year’s Republican nominating process. He wrote glowing Twitter messages about Rick Santorum , calling him the only candidate with a “genuine big vision” for the country. 
 
 Along with Roger Ailes , chairman of Fox News, Mr. Murdoch urged Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to run. Both men admire Mr. Christie’s gusto and toughness — a sharp edge they have themselves. “He really wanted Christie,” said one of Mr. Murdoch’s friends. Mr. Ailes, a former campaign strategist for Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan , shares Mr. Murdoch’s disdain of how the Romney campaign is being run, telling people privately that it is too soft. 
 
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 Although Fox News has been cast by liberal critics as an arm of the Romney campaign, its coverage of the presidential election has been far more aggressive toward Mr. Obama than it has been kind to Mr. Romney. 
 
 Mr. Murdoch does much of his sounding off on Twitter, as he did last weekend when he suggested Mr. Romney replace his staff. Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, politely brushed off Mr. Murdoch’s concerns about the staff’s competence. “Governor Romney respects Rupert Murdoch, and also respects his team and has confidence in them,” Ms. Saul said. 
 
 Those who know him say that his fondness for Twitter is classic Murdoch. A compulsive e-mailer and phone caller, he has always had a hyperactive mind. And the impetuous, unfiltered nature of Twitter suits his shoot-from-the hip style. 
 
 Mr. Murdoch’s political influence in the United States has never been anywhere near as potent as it was in Britain , where he once slipped into a private meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron through the back door of 10 Downing Street. But the phone hacking scandal has left him greatly diminished there and rendered him something more of a complicated figure in this country. 
 
 Mr. Romney’s advisers say privately that having Mr. Murdoch sniping at them is better than the alternative. To be praised by him would open the campaign up to criticisms that it is a tool of the conservative establishment. 
 
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 “To his credit , the idea that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t think something could be better run is unimaginable,” said one Romney adviser, who requested anonymity to assess Mr. Murdoch’s well-known self-confidence. “That’s just how he is.” 
 
 Last week, when the campaign invited a few dozen leaders from Wall Street, the news media and Republican politics to an informal discussion with Mr. Romney at a private Manhattan social club, Mr. Murdoch was one of the first to offer a suggestion. 
 
 Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster who was there, recalled that Mr. Murdoch spoke up after the chief executive of Univision, Randy Falco, told Mr. Romney that Mr. Obama had appeared on his network a dozen times and was building a considerable edge with Latino voters. (The meeting was first reported by Politico.) 
 
 “Every campaign attracts a fair number of critics,” Ms. Conway said. “But not every critic is created equal. Rupert Murdoch is a very important voice in the national conversation.” 
 
 When he spoke, Mr. Murdoch did not have much of a question — just more unsolicited advice, this time about the need to win over Latino voters. 
 
 “I hope that you’ll take the fight to President Obama,” he told Mr. Romney.
– Rupert Murdoch has never been a big fan of Mitt Romney, and the lukewarm feeling is mutual, the New York Times finds. On Romney's two visits to the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal—which printed a scathing attack on the "confused" Romney campaign yesterday—there was "zero enthusiasm, no engagement," a Journal source says. Both Murdoch and Fox News chief Roger Ailes urged New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to run because they admired his toughness and saw Romney as too soft, insiders say. Staff members present at Romney's Journal meetings say Romney left Murdoch cold by dwelling on his management experience instead of coming out with a clear conservative philosophy. Romney aides, speaking under condition of anonymity, say they would rather have Murdoch making critical tweets than praising the campaign and making it look like a tool of the conservative establishment. "To his credit, the idea that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t think something could be better run is unimaginable," one adviser says. "That’s just how he is."