Might this be the best Romney campaign speech ever? From the New York Times:

Mr. Romney, who has invested most heavily in capturing the Republican delegates to be selected through Tuesday’s Michigan primary, spent the morning speaking to more than 2,000 students at Grand Blanc High School. Though the size of the crowd was impressive, few were old enough to vote and the assembly was mandatory for students.

In a somewhat disjointed speech at the school, Mr. Romney struggled at times with how to engage his teenage audience, starting off with an analogy from a decades-old game show, “Let’s Make a Deal,” about the choices the students faced. Then he trotted out some of his favorite anecdotes, including one about Mike Eruzione, a hero of the 1980 United States Olympic hockey team.

Dressed in a suit and tie, Mr. Romney talked variously about “inflection points” in American history, urged the students to get married before having kids, and warned teenagers about getting “hooked” on drugs, saying “your life’s income and your happiness quotient will actually go right down to the basement.”

To which some pimple-faced kid in the back went pale, and whispered with horror, “No, not my happiness quotient!“ 

I’ve followed Romney closer than any other candidate this year — not because I like him, but because he’s the most fascinating. Here’s a guy who, as a Slate writer once said, looks like he decided to run for president 40 years ago and then assembled a family to fit that. He’s so clearly designed himself for this moment, only to discover (in Iowa and New Hampshire, at least, and probably Michigan today Update: I overestimated Michigan) that the perfect candidate isn’t something you can manufacture; it’s something you have to become, something that builds from within. And so here he is, this pitch-perfect spokesman for himself, who can’t figure out how to talk with high-schoolers because he didn’t consult anybody on it the night before. And it’s beautiful.