I predicted that Rob Portman would be Romney’s running mate. Moreover, I said (here) that it was a prediction you could take to the bank.

Here’s what I said about Ryan: “It’s not going to be Paul Ryan because he’s too hard-right and is the author of a budget proposal that – notwithstanding Ryan's claims – is not truly about the deficit (or it would not include tax cuts) but about pursuing an extreme agenda of drastically shrinking the federal government. It’s bad enough Romney had to endorse Ryan’s budget proposal; he’s not going to tie himself tighter to the millstone of the Ryan budget and then jump into the sea.”

And so today – right here, right now – I am virtually eating my hat in cyberspace. (There was a time the word virtually meant something else.) Ugh. It tastes awful.

But I stubbornly stand by what I said about why Ryan would be a terrible choice for Romney. So now we will see who knows more about politics: Romney and his experienced political team, or me.

It’s been pointed out to me that both John McCain and Steve Schmidt, who was a senior McCain advisor for the 2008 campaign, reviewed 23 years of Romney’s tax returns when they were vetting possible vice-presidential candidates. Senator McCain says: ""I can personally vouch for the fact that there was nothing in his tax returns that would in any way be disqualifying for him to be a candidate."" Steve Schmidt, using similar – and presumably agreed-upon – language says: ""There was nothing that was disqualifying.”

Senator McCain and Steve Schmidt are both honorable men. I don’t question their veracity. Yet what they are saying turns upon what “disqualifying” means. They clearly chose that word carefully, and they both reasonably declined to go further. McCain expressly declined to answer whether Romney paid no taxes.

Surely “disqualifying” includes anything illegal. But does it include taking a position that was open to debate at the time but later determined by the IRS or the courts to be improper? Does it include aggressive use of tax shelters? Does it include making a charitable contribution to an organization that advocates something controversial? Does it include paying no or extremely low taxes for several years?

In the context of Senator McCain and Steve Schmidt’s remarks, “disqualifying” probably does include paying no taxes for ten years. Presumably, that would make any political candidate toast. Moreover, I do not believe that McCain and Schmidt would have implied that Reid’s claim is false – as their statements were designed to do – if that were not the case. Nevertheless, I don’t equate “disqualifying,” as used by Senator McCain and Steve Schmidt, to include everything that would be politically problematic. I continue to believe that it’s logical to assume that Romney’s unreleased tax returns differ in some politically-harmful way from those he has released – and that whatever this is, it’s not a minor matter.

Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post fact checker, awarded Harry Reid four Pinocchios – the worst possible credibility rating – for claiming that Mitt Romney did not pay taxes for ten years. That award would have been justified if it were based exclusively on the fact that Reid’s claim is based on an anonymous source and is therefore unsubstantiated. Moreover, even in the rough-and-tumble of politics, serious charges based on anonymous sources are unfair.

But that was not Kessler’s reasoning. Kessler attempted to evaluate – based on the tax information that Romney has released, that is, his 2010 tax return and his 2011 estimated tax return – how likely it is that Romney paid no federal income taxes at all in prior years. Kessler writes:

In other words, this tax return shows a portfolio that is not structured to yield zero taxes. We spoke to a number of tax experts, all of whom said that, given Romney’s current portfolio, it was highly improbable for Romney to have had 10 years with tax-free returns — though there could have been one or two years with little or no taxes.

That reasoning is flawed. It is based on the assumption that Romney’s 2010 and 2011 tax returns are representative of his earlier returns, at least in terms of the structure of Romney’s holdings, if not on the balance of income and losses.

But if that’s the case, then Romney would have released more tax returns. He is paying a considerable political price for refusing to do so. If his last two years are representative of earlier years – with the possible exception that there may be a year or two of exceptionally low taxes – then the sensible thing would be to release earlier returns, even many years of returns to demonstrate that a couple of years of zero or close to zero taxes were out of the ordinary.

The logical assumption is not that Romney’s 2010 and 2011 tax returns are representative of earlier years; it is precisely the reverse, namely, that earlier returns are markedly different in a way that makes them much more politically harmful.

Kessler had a number of experts review Romney’s two returns to assess how likely it was he paid no taxes for ten years. One said that “given the portfolio in 2010” that was unlikely. This expert also said: “It is improbable that a man of his wealth would have paid no taxes for 10 years.” Those are two different things. The correct question is not whether – using same structure and devices that Romney employed in 2010 – he is likely to have paid no taxes for ten years; it is whether he could have structured his holdings in some fashion that would have allowed him to have paid no, or extremely low, taxes for a considerable period of time. It is not clear whether Kessler’s expert was answering that question.