No more Romney interviews? That’s SOOOOOO Meg Whitman (VIDEO)

If you thought President Obama’s attempt to keep a conversation with a newspaper off-the-record was lame, get this: Mitt Romney may not do any network interviews for the final TWO WEEKS of the campaign.

None are scheduled. But if true, that is what we call in football the “prevent defense.” For you full-time political geeks, the prevent defense is a very conservative strategy used by a team that is winning in the final minutes of a game. The prevent D is supposed to prevent big plays that could lose them the game. And according to this just-released Washington Post/ABC Poll daily tracking polls, Romney is up and Obama is at his lowest point in weeks. (However, it is a daily NATIONAL tracking poll. Keep your eye on the swing states.)

The prevent D often works. But when performed wrong, as the cliche goes, the only thing the prevent defense prevents is winning.

We caution that this is all very speculative. (On Politico? Noooooooo!) But here’s what Romney spokesperson Kevin Madden told Politico Tuesday when asked if Romney was going to do any network interviews now that President Obama is talking with everybody he sees with a microphone, perfect hair, a $3,000 suit and an underpaid 22-year-old assistant:

“Look, one of the great things about the debates were we got a chance to talk directly to the American people about the issues that they care about. Over the next 14 days, Gov. Romney is looking forward to meeting with as many voters in these critical swing states and delivering them his closing argument about why he would be a better president. I don’t have anything for you on scheduling yet, but I’ll let you know as we update it.”

This reminds us something said at the Republican National Convention a few weeks back by Meg Whitman — Mitt’s ol’ pal and the type of person he’s said he’d like in his Cabinet.

Meg told the California delegation that when she was running for California Guv in 2010 that she stopped taking questions at town hall meetings during the last two weeks of the campaign. She wanted to avoid fielding questions from Democratic “plants,” as she called them. Then again, as we painfully remember, Meg wasn’t that much into doing interviews for the first 98 weeks of the campaign, either. (Although, yes, she did plenty of five-minute sit downs with TV stations in the Central Valley.)

Now, network interviewers usually aren’t plants, but….oh, fill in your own joke here.

Then listen to Meg, now the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, say it herself, courtesy of our pals and occasional drinking buddies at the Sacramento Bee:

Joe Garofoli