Wednesday, January 16, 2008

What Next?   [Rick Brookhiser]

The primary process is defended by those who love it as a test of the candidates' mettle, almost a symbolic dry-run of office-holding itself, and there is a lot of truth to this. It gives candidates an opportunity to get their messages out — or their lack of message, if that's the kind of person they are. It subjects them to a variety of tests, which in some cases mimick those they would face in the White House: being on the spot, being on the go; explaining, persuading.

Yet the test is not perfect. Picking a campaign manager is not picking a Justice of the Supreme Court; allocating an ad budget is not balancing the budget; political warfare is not warfare. The months of stumping and gladhanding can give us a sense that we have seen these men (and woman) in action, but we are only watching auditions.

"When Richard Nixon was about to leave the White House," historian Forrest McDonald wrote, in The American Presidency, "he was reported to have wandered around, talking to portraits of presidents past. Detractors heralded that as evidence that he had lost his mind, but as George Reedy remarked, 'To anyone who has had the opportunity to observe a president at close range, it is perfectly normal conduct.'" Normal because you don't really understand the job until you have been in it.

In a race without incumbents, no one has been in the job yet. What we have to go by is the track records of candidates' careers — of which the last few months form an important part, but only a part.

01/16 09:42 AMShare