It’s starting to look like Governor Romney is going to attempt to go this whole race without playing what might be called his ace-in-the-hole. He had a chance to play it relatively early at the debate in Hempstead. It was put on the table by one of the questioners, Phillip Tricolla, who asked the president whether he agreed with his energy secretary that it’s not the policy of his department to lower gasoline prices. President Obama rattled on with his usual gift for gab without substance, and then, when the question was put to Governor Romney, the Republican let it pass.

The fact is that the value of gasoline has been plunging. If one were to look at a chart of gasoline priced in terms of gold it would look like a downhill ski slope. The reality is that it’s not the gasoline that has been going up. It’s the value of the Obama dollar that has been going down. We’ve made this point repeatedly in these columns in recent years, but, as our friends at the Wall Street Journal like to say, it takes 75 editorials to pass a law. At the rate Mr. Romney is going, it’ll take 750 editorials. All the more reason to keep marking the importance of the issue of honest money.

Mr. Romney had another chance to play this ace. It came when the candidates were talking about Communist China. The governor was particularly forceful, saying that America is “going to have to make sure that as we trade with other nations that they play by the rules.” He asserted that China hasn’t been playing by the rules and said that “one of the ways they don’t play by the rules is artificially holding down the value of their currency.” He argued that this means “their prices on their goods are low, and that makes them advantageous in the marketplace.”

Fair enough, but what rules is he talking about? If the Chinese communists are running down their currency, what are Chairman Bernanke and President Obama doing in respect of our own currency? The fact is that the value of the Obama dollar has plunged over the course of his presidency against the communist Chinese scrip. And the Obama dollar has plunged faster than the communist currency against the real measure of money, which is gold. So if Mr. Romney intends to name the Chinese communists as currency manipulators — and do so on “day one” of his administration, as he said again last night — what standard is he going to use?

The logical standard is gold. It’s the only tried and true international, non-political standard. Mr. Romney is in a good position to use this ace, because it is his party that has laid claim to the monetary question. Mr. Romney is running on a platform that calls for the establishment of a new gold commission to take a look at putting America onto a modernized version of the gold standard. He has vowed to replace the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, who has come out publicly against the gold standard and in favor of retaining the fiat system.

If that’s the plan, it strikes us that the time is past due for Mr. Romney to start talking about monetary principles. A key element of leadership, as Reagan taught so well, is educating and explaining. The issue of honest money works particularly well with the rest of Mr. Romney’s tax-reduction, pro-growth, pro-jobs strategy. One of the things that the two candidates’ strong performances* in the debate last night reminded us is that this election could be razor close. It’s not a race up from which Mr. Romney will want to awake on November 7 to discover he might have won if he played the ace he had in his hand.

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* Three strong performances if one counts the moderator, Candy Crowley, though she tilted to Mr. Obama, particularly in correcting Mr. Romney on what the president said in the Rose Garden after the terrorist attack at Benghazi; it turns out that Mr. Romney was correct in how he characterized the president’s remarks.