…or I am. This makes sense.
…the best presidential candidates don’t start out as fully formed national figures, like a Bob Dole or a Bill Bradley. They evolve to meet the moment by listening to voters in depressing banquet halls and cramped living rooms. They sharpen arguments through endless repetition and find their voices when no one in the press is really listening. They meet adversity and keep on going, because they just can’t imagine living in a world where they haven’t proved the rest of us wrong.
Chances are that one of the candidates you see now is going to look a lot more presidential a year from now than he does today. Republicans shouldn’t underestimate the power of that transformation — and neither should the man they’re trying to unseat.
Oh, there’s the usual condescending from the Left* here, but the core concept is sound. You’ve got some people hungry for the j0b itself here; which is a refreshing change from 2008, when the guy who won turned out to be simply hungry for the nomination. At least, that’s how it feels to me now, three years later.
Moe Lane
*And, speaking as somebody who was – shock, surprise! – a deeply nerd himself in high school; Bai’s comment about girls being ambivalent about nice guys asking them to the prom six months early might have been meant to come across as being worldly and all, but I think that there’s some personal hidden pain, there… oh, was that snide? Well, so is calling the GOP a bunch of racists** because we’re not going to pretend that the President is only now in a place in his life where he is expected to actually do real work – and is doing precisely as well as one might expect from a coddled hothouse flower with no applicable skill set, an IQ about thirty points less than the one commonly listed in his hagiography, and a charming inability to learn from his mistakes.
And I’d probably would have had to say that about a hypothetical President John Kerry, by the way. Mitigated by the fact that the Navy actually teaches its personnel useful things, of course.
**Matt Bai should also look up the “Red Scare” some time; I hate to break it to the guy, but there actually was an international Communist conspiracy dedicated to espionage against, and destabilization of, the West. Not to mention that entire ‘worldwide revolution’ thing.