They could pose together for Cosmo

Mitt Romney, failed candidate for the Republican nomination in 2008 and former governor of Massachusetts, ought to get going this minute and change his legal residence from Massachusetts to Michigan, where he was born and his father was governor and a failed presidential hopeful.

Anyone who saw Mitt Romney Tuesday night at Boston’s Park Plaza Ballroom, before Scott Brown’s victory speech, saw a man who could not have been more pleased with himself and his under-the-radar efforts to get Brown elected to the seat once held by Ted Kennedy. Romney, who failed in his own attempt in 1994 to unseat Kennedy, mobilized his supporters for Brown, sent in his smartest aides and, best of all (for Brown) kept out of sight. Brown clinched the race against inept Democrat Martha Coakley by five points. Romney was so delighted that one would think he had just delivered the U.S. Senate seat to one of his five sons.

Romney, ever disciplined, is obviously hoping to grab the Republican nomination in 2012. He’ll need a vice president and, were it not constitutionally prohibited for both the candidate and his running mate to be from the same state, Brown — 12 years Romney’s junior — might be an appealing choice. And so the above suggestion that Romney establish residence in Michigan.

These two would make one square-jawed and handsome ticket. They remain so unusually good-looking still that there could be a shared centerfold in their future. (Brown posed nude in 1982 for Cosmopolitan.)

Brown on a national ticket? He has a lineage similar to President Barack Obama’s — state Senate (Brown was a state rep before, and town selectman and town assessor before that), then U.S. senator. Like Obama he’s an exceedingly lucky man — the charmed recipient of a confluence of circumstances, including an opponent who somehow managed to brand Red Sox hero Curt Schilling as a Yankee fan. Remember, Obama was going nowhere in the 2004 U.S. Senate race until his opponents in the primary and the general election imploded in divorce scandals.

Another interesting similarity: Both men grew up in divorced families, neither with a father in his life. Brown’s parents divorced when he was 1, and each went on to marry four times.

Of course, there is one huge difference between Obama and Brown. Obama is a seriously serious man; Brown is an easygoing guy’s guy.

Brown has two attractive grown daughters. Obama has two attractive daughters, both children. So in considering the next sentence, there’s an age gap that makes the comparison unfair to Brown. Still, 10 years from now, could anyone imagine Obama, ever, standing before a surging crowd of supporters — as Brown did during his victory speech — and joking that his daughters are “available”?