How do you protect Romney from disastrous self-inflicted embarrassment?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Mitt Romney's foreign tour has been an unmitigated disaster so far. Even with everything lined up for him, high-level meetings (even for someone who isn't an elected official and hasn't even been declared the Republican nominee yet) and softball interviews, it's been one embarrassing gaffe after another, notably in London (where all he had to do was not be an arrogrant prick).

So how does he deal with it? By not being such an idiot? No, by shutting out the press, of course, so that his gaffes -- or in this case his shameless pandering to the far right -- won't be reported:

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who touched down here Saturday night for a day of meetings with top Israeli and Palestinian leaders, plans to wrap up his visit to Israel by collecting money from some of his biggest benefactors behind closed doors.

Some of Romney's Jewish donors are flying here from the United States to attend the Jerusalem fundraiser on Monday morning, including Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who has pledged to personally give tens of millions of dollars to a pro-Romney super PAC.

But Romney's campaign announced Saturday that it would block the news media from covering the event, which will be held at the King David Hotel. The campaign's decision to close the fundraiser to the press violates the ground rules it negotiated with news organizations in April, when Romney wrapped up the Republican nomination and began opening some of his finance events to the news media...

Campaign spokesman Rick Gorka declined to explain the campaign's decision to violate protocol with the Jerusalem event. Pressed repeatedly by reporters to offer an explanation, Gorka said only that the fundraiser was "closed press."

"That's all I've got for you — it's closed press," Gorka said.

Would the event be open the press were the tour going well? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Romney just wants to suck up to the Israeli right, the right-wing Israel lobby back home, and more importantly to some big-time donors (like the once Newt-backing Adelson) in private, without any media coverage and so without the likelihood of being widely ridiculed for saying extremist and otherwise outrageous things.

But you've got to think that Mitt's embarrassing performance thus far, exposing himself as someone clearly overmatched on the international stage and unqualified for the presidency, has a lot to do with it.