Romney's numbers were sinking across the board before the VP pick. One reason they spent so much effort on hiding his VP pick was to limit the amount of time Obama would have to taint the name before the board flipped. Obama's campaign was spreading horror stories about the VP's medicare coupon system within minutes of that announcement. VP pick doesn't mean much to most voters, but it was a sound decision of Romney to deflect attention away from his tax problem and how he isn't connecting with voters. If Obama continues to go after the VP this gives Romney a few weeks for the media to forget about all his problems before he takes over the advertising channels.