Romney adviser's hot take: ISIS wouldn't exist and Putin "would know his place" if Mitt had won!

Mitt Romney 2016 is looking increasingly likely, but it's worth reflecting for a moment on what the country did to itself by not electing the serial candidate in 2012.

In a new Boston Globe story on Romney's preparations for a third White House bid, a close Romney adviser offers a look at the hunky-dory world we'd live in had voters sent Mitt to Washington. If President Romney were in charge, the adviser said, “There wouldn’t be an ISIS at all, and Putin would know his place in life. Domestically, things would be in better shape.”

You had your chance to elect a national savior, America. But good news: you may get another!

Of course, there are a few tiny problems with the Romney adviser's narrative. First, the Islamic State militant group, also known as ISIS, has existed in its current iteration since 2011. Perhaps Romney's election would have retroactively abolished the group, but it's a little unclear how that would have worked. As for the notion that President Romney would have Vladimir Putin quavering in his boots: Even when the swaggering George W. Bush was president, Putin was a bellicose thug, invading Georgia and seeking to bully Eastern European countries into submission.

And domestically? Well, Romney promised Americans that he'd have unemployment under six percent by the end of his first term and vowed to jumpstart the American economy. Despite voters' rejection of Romney, unemployment currently stands at 5.6 percent and has been under six percent since September; President Obama beat Romney's January 2017 deadline by more than two years. Meanwhile, the economy is growing at a healthy clip, expanding at a faster rate in the third quarter of last year than it had in more than a decade.

But presumably things would be even better under Willard Mitt Romney. According to his associates, Romney may be poised to finish the job he couldn't two years ago. The stiff former governor even promises to act like a real human being on the campaign stump this time! And Romney advisers told the Globe they've seen an edgier Mitt of late: "Some close to Romney say they’ve seen a looser side to him lately," the Globe reports, "citing him putting bunny ears over former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown during Governor Charlie Baker’s inauguration."

What a rascal, that one.