Questions Asked, Questions Answered

Ross Douthat, my second favorite conservative Atlantic Media blogger, sums up the presidential race so far:

I would add, too, that there's a lot more to running a successful administration than having a President with decades of foreign policy experience. You wouldn't know it from listening to John McCain of late, admittedly, but that's because foreign policy experience is his trump card against Barack Obama, so he's playing it as often as he can. But an effective administration needs to be able to communicate and charm and finesse its way through difficulties, to appease its base and reach out to the middle, to talk fluently about kitchen-table issues and appear in touch with the hopes and fears of the average voter. This is not, to put it mildly, the sort of politics and governance that John McCain excels at. And consider, for a moment, the political landscape that he wakes up to every morning. He's running for the Presidency at a time when the Republican brand is in the toilet, with a party that seems unable to excite its hard-core supporters or woo swing voters, and a leadership - McCain included - that gets the heebie-jeebies when called upon to discuss any topic save terrorism, 9/11 and the Surge. Even if by some Jeremiah Wright-aided miracle he edges out Barack Obama, he'll limp into the White House as a John Major-in-the-making - an aging politician who won an election that belonged by rights to the other party, facing Democratic majorities in both houses, a media that will be primed to treat Senators Obama and Clinton as the default co-Presidents for the next four years, and a conservative base that's just waiting for an opportunity to turn on him. Does this sound like a recipe for a successful Presidency?

Nope, Ross, I can’t say that it does.