Boston ? Well here’s a new variation on the old fairy tale. The knight on the white charger comes galloping into town on a rescue mission. And his first act is to knock the damsel in distress out of his way.

Of course, our hero Mitt Romney isn’t really an equestrian. That’s a summer sport. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that the man who salvaged the Olympics came back to Massachusetts politics on a luge. The only options acting Gov. Jane Swift had were to get out of his way or get knocked down.

In truth, Swift is more dame than damsel in distress. At the famously raucous St. Patrick’s Day political breakfast, Swift quipped that Romney wasn’t sure he was going to run for governor because of the Massachusetts drought: “His handlers were concerned that there wouldn’t be enough water for him to walk on.”

But by Tuesday she bowed to the Romney juggernaut or luge-naut and dropped out of the race. Admitting her disadvantage in this event, Swift said that she couldn’t be governor, mother, fund-raiser, candidate in the Republican primary against the man with all “Wheaties appeal.”

“Something had to give,” said Swift, “I am sure there isn’t a working parent in America that hasn’t faced it, that when the demands of the two tasks you take on both increase substantially, something has to give.”

Before we file this under political sports history, let’s go to the videotape. Swift was 25 when she first ran for office. She was pregnant when she was chosen to run for lieutenant governor as the young, female, sharp half of a Republican team. When the governor left to become ambassador to Canada don’t ask she was pregnant again with twins.

To the outrage of Dr. Laura and the obsession of media everywhere, the first female governor of Massachusetts was also the first pregnant governor in the country and, Dear Lord, the first governor ever to deliver twins.

We keep telling women to run for office while they’re young. But she became a role model and a cautionary tale on whether women could “do it all” if “all” meant balancing work and family and politics. In Swift’s case, “all” was not a full cup, it was Niagara Falls. Family and work meant three preschool children, a three-hour commute home in a state with no governor’s mansion, and governing as a Republican with a Democratic Legislature.

Her year in office made the giant slalom course at Park City look smooth. She maneuvered some moguls, and badly wounded herself on others. After Romney hinted that he’d deign to enter the contest, her polling numbers among Republicans crashed.

Meanwhile Romney, after three years and a wildly successful event in Utah, had more endorsements than Derek Parra. All he had to do to win the Republican nomination was to step onto the platform. “Star-spangled Banner” please.

Is there a double standard here? Is there a different sense of whether a “he” and a “she” can have “it” all? When Swift was trying to figure out if she could run the primary race, she said her family hours were “non-negotiable.” As for Romney? His wife Ann, in remission from multiple sclerosis, openly expressed her reluctance to leave Utah where she’s been healthy. Then she demurred, “I’m behind him always. I never want to slow him down.” Need I say more?

But the other double standard is in checkbook politics. Swift comes from a working-class family. Romney is a venture capitalist. His ” hard times” came during his early years of marriage when they had to dip into capital to get by. He spent $7 million of his own in a Senate race against Ted Kennedy in 1994. Swift faced a tough struggle to raise money; Romney was a money magnet for others with a full checkbook of his own.

So much for the primary. He hasn’t gotten the gold yet. Republicans have won the governor’s office in this Democratic state in the last decade only by wooing the moderate women’s vote. Romney’s stands don’t sound moderate to this woman. Indeed, his “stand” on abortion looks like a snowboarding trip down the halfpipe.

Even those who were lukewarm about Swift’s tenure may take offense at the sense of entitlement of the man who came home to be coronated, casually wiping out the first woman governor on his way.

Romney may yet turn out to be the Michelle Kwan of politics. As for Jane Swift, her departure was a class act. She’s still got game.