I'd say Romney's campaign was about equal to Kerry's in performance maybe a little worse. Since given the dynamics the GOP was facing in 2012 they should have by all means defeated Obama.
I like the Romney-Kerry comparison, in that each were the best, yet flawed candidates in mediocre fields who ran mediocre campaigns against two campaign machines in Bush and Obama.
I really don't think either Bush or Obama would have lost, even if Romney or Kerry ran campaigns as well as Bill Clinton in '92. Both Romney and Kerry found themselves as frontrunners when stronger candidates backed out, presumably because they thought they couldn't win.
It's really easy to look at the stats of the election in hindsight and say, "Man, Daniels or Christie would have taken Obama to the cleaners," or "Hillary would have destroyed Bush," but there are damn good reasons why they didn't run.
