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| AP Photo |
The resident conservative at the New York Times, Ross Douthat, laments the weak Republican presidential field for 2012 and wrote the other day about what makes a great presidential candidate.
His foray into management styles and capabilities of firing up the party base and the unpersuaded voters in the middle leads to this odd conclusion: a combination of Jon Huntsman and Sarah Palin would make a formidable GOP candidate. But the piece, written under the headline, “A good candidate is hard to find,” breaks down candidate weaknesses in a thoughtful way.
First, referring to the current field’s inability to fire up voters, Douthat wrote:
“What’s remarkable is how often this seems to happen. As weak as this year’s Republican field has proved, it’s not that much weaker than a number of recent presidential vintages, from the Democrats’ lineups in 1988 and 2004 to the Republican field in 1996. In presidential politics, the great talents (a Clinton, a Reagan) seem to be the exception; a march of Dole-Dukakis-Mondale mediocrity is closer to the rule.”
Then he lays out his theory that all quality candidates for the White House must display at least two of three indispensable – and contradictory – traits.
“The problem, perhaps, is that a successful presidential campaign calls on a trio of talents that only rarely overlap. … First, a great politician needs the gift of management. A would-be president has to be the C.E.O. of his or her campaign.
“… But … the great manager is unlikely to be a great persuader, capable of seducing undecided voters with his empathy, or inspiring them. … The politician who’s good at reaching out to the unconverted is usually mistrusted by his own base, and the politician whose us-versus-them rhetoric inspires devotion among ideologues rarely finds it easy to pivot to a more transcendent, unifying style.”
Just take off your partisan hat and read.
