How can you tell when a presidential campaign is not going so well? A lot of ways, actually, but one way is to listen to the candidate for vice president's pet names for his presidential running mate. If one of those sobriquets is a word normally reserved to describe death, filth, and feces, chances are that you are looking at a rather unsuccessful presidential campaign.

In a New York Times piece from Sunday that examined how Paul Ryan could best be utilized by Mitt Romney, Craig Robinson, the former political director for the Republican Party of Iowa, was quoted as saying, "I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he'll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him."

Rather than decry Robinson's comments or reaffirm his commitment to the Romney ticket since the Times story broke, Ryan has been running with the nickname, according to Politico, telling campaign staffers things like, "If Stench calls, take a message" and "Tell Stench I'm having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later."

"President Stench" does have a certain ring to it. Alas, something tells me we won't have the opportunity to say it anytime soon.

UPDATE: Roger Simon is now telling BuzzFeed that the portion of his report quoted above was "satire." We're a bit confused by his interpretation of satire, as he's referring to a single false fact (concocted by him?) in an otherwise mostly accurate piece, but here's his statement: "Some people always don't get something, but I figured describing PowerPoint as having been invented to euthanize cattle would make the satire clear. I guess people hate PowerPoint more than I thought."

[Image via AP]