Until now, the Sarah Palin pick looked like a home run, and maybe a game-changer, for John McCain. It galvanized the Republicans’ conservative base, gave GOP activists hope for their ticket, and jump-started support among significant numbers of American women. This week, however, the ominous sounds of the economic tremors rumbling through our nation point to the advantages a different running mate would have given McCain: I’m referring to Mitt Romney.

Loose Cannon never made light of Governor Palin’s qualifications—I pointed instead to the obvious hypocrisy of many of her critics. And, if you consider that the job she is auditioning for is vice-president, not president, it could be reasonably argued that being a small-town mayor and then a popular first-term governor of Alaska with proven results as a reformer is a solid foundation for the number two job, which, by definition is a waiting game.

Except that our economy now appears to have deep structural problems. Many of our largest financial institutions are being bankrupted by the very executives who are supposed to be their stewards. Most of those executives have been rewarded with huge bonuses, not penitentiary sentences, and the nation cries out for stronger regulation from Washington. Senator McCain has shown he doesn’t mind a dose of strong federal regulation now and then—he’s not really a Ronald Reagan Republican in this way—but, by neither training nor inclination, is he an authority on economic issues. The subject doesn’t really interest him. But for voters in key states, the job description for national office may have just changed.

Romney could have helped in this arena—a lot. I won’t give his entire résumé on this post, although I urge you to click on this link to see for yourself. This is a man who attended Harvard Business School and Harvard Law simultaneously (while starting a family!) earning degrees in both business and law. He then went to work for Bain & Co, bolstering troubled companies (including, in a second stint, Bain itself). He helped launch a lucrative spinoff, Bain Capital, that made money for him and his partners—and the companies they turned around. He was then recruited to rescue the 2002 winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. The games were mired in debt and scandal, and sponsors were fleeing. Romney inherited a $400 million shortfall, which he turned to profit and success. On the strength of that performance he became governor of Massachusetts at a time its finances were in a mess—and he balanced its books, too.

I see I’m not alone in thinking wistfully of Brother Mitt this week. John Cassidy, writing in The New Yorker magazine’s “Talk of the Town” section, said that the cataclysmic events at Lehman Brothers and other places have raised doubts about the wisdom of bypassing Mitt Romney. (That link isn't up yet, but this nugget was gleaned from Mike Allen’s always-excellent blog in The Politico.) Loose Cannon agrees. But since Mitt missed the GOP brass ring this year, he'd make a fine Secretary of the Treasury—for either President McCain, or President Obama.