Narrow Escape

I guess the proper response to this is to laugh; and to breathe yet another sigh of relief that the business genius and management expert, the presumptive budget-balancer known as The Rominee didn't become our president:

It is standard procedure for presidential campaigns to arrange and prepay for meals, bus travel, and charter flights, then bill the news outlets afterward for their share of the cost. ... 

But many of the bills from the Romney campaign — which have continued to trickle in since Election Day — are much higher than during other campaigns.
For example, on Oct. 11, each reporter was charged $812 for a meal and a rented "holding" space, where the press waited before moving to the next event. ... And on the night of the vice presidential debate, the campaign planned a "viewing party" for the reporters with Romney, complete with a large rented room with a patio, massage tables, fresh cut flowers, and lots of food and booze. One campaign aide told BuzzFeed that campaign officials' orders were to "go big" — a nice gesture, perhaps, but one that wasn't discussed with every media outlet.
The tab for the party: $745 per reporter. 

... One campaign aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the bills were not artificially inflated, but rather the product of a generally mismanaged campaign ...

If it's funny -- and it is -- it's also more evidence that Mitt Romney was not only an incompetent campaigner and a liar, but his purported skills in our economy were no more than a ginned-up publicity meme, promoted by Fox and its friends, and swallowed as usual, without chewing, by its teabagging consumers. Probably not the right time to say it, but we really dodged a bullet, didn't we?