In my humble opinion, Romney would make a better veep pick than Ross Douthat suggests, but I think what he’s saying here this is exactly the right way to view the close poll numbers:

It’s true that McCain has stayed pretty consistently within striking distance of Obama over the last month, but it’s also true that McCain never manages to break 44 percent in the Gallup tracking poll; in the RCP average, likewise, even his recent upward surge has only brought him to … 44 percent. Which means that McCain needs to win over an awful lot of voters who are currently fluctuating between Obama and “undecided,” rather than between Obama and McCain – and I really don’t think that making fun of Obama for eating protein bars or demanding that he mention Latin America in his speeches is going to get the job done … Races can be close without being all that fluid, and the fact that McCain rarely drops more than five points behind Obama may be precisely the thing that keeps his campaign from taking the kind of gambles – like, say, a one-term pledge – that he needs to get to fifty percent, or to 270. And when I read in Bill Kristol’s column that Team McCain is leaning toward playing it white, male, and boring with the VP pick, with the terrible twosome of Tom Ridge and Mitt Romney (about whom more anon) among the leading contenders, I have the sense that McCain’s staff is going to wake up the morning after election day congratulating themselves on having held Barack Obama to “only” 51 percent of the vote.