Groundskeeper Romney in a New Jersey allegory

Once upon a time - say, this week - a Republican presidential candidate  and savvy one-time groundskeeper boasted to a small gathering in Kettering, Oh., of his success in helping to clean up the debris from a football field.

It was another of candidate Mitt Romney's expressed can-do experiences while marooned in the Dayton suburb while Gov. Chris Christie and President Obama were taking care of business together in the destructive winds and tides of New Jersey in a mutually congratulatory  manner.

But as the can-do candidate has often asserted in his metallic utterances,  "I did it before and will do it again".  Yet,  perhaps saving the best of his tales for last in the closing days of his campaign,  there he was helping out with canned goods to be sent -  where? - "to New  Jersey, I think"-  while recalling his luminous business-like moment cleaning  up a football field.

Gather 'round.  Let the can-do candidate tell you how he solved the problem at his high school.

There had been a a big celebration at the field and some classmates were assigned to clean up the mess, "And I thought, 'how are we going to clean up all the mess on this football field?'" Remember,  class,  he was a mere teenager   already experiencing on-the-Bain-job can-do training.    (We are now deeply into the New Jersey allegory of man against nature spoken by a marooned presidential candidate who was not invited to the wedding on the eastern shores.)

 And it was determined that the cleaner-uppers would each take a different yard line "and just walk down and do your lane. And if everybody cleans their lanes, we'll get it done".

And so it happened that Obama and Christie and FEMA  and the other emergency crews were so busy they didn't find time to thank the can-do president when he said, "And so today, we're cleaning one lane if, you will."

You'd think that they could find a submerged high school football field  in Atlantic City (That's in New Jersey,  I think)  that would require a veteran like the can-do -president to clean it up.