A plain blog about politics: Winnowing
I can only repeat what I've been saying: it's not that the field is small; it's that the winnowing has begun early.
....
But, look, we call this period the "invisible primary" for a reason: just like in the state-by-state primaries to come next year, the current contest has winners and losers, and the losers tend to drop out. Now, some potential candidates really haven't contested the invisible primary...I haven't read anything, for example, about Jeb Bush. So I'll chalk him up as a "did not run." But those who hired staff, sought endorsements, traveled to Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina -- they contested the invisible primary. They were candidates for 2012. Even if they didn't quite make it all the way to 2012.
"Barbour aide James Richardson writes:
ReplyDeleteOf course, a Barbour candidacy was not without impediments. He was a consummate Washington powerbroker — a top lieutenant to former President Ronald Reagan, a lobbyist and acclaimed party chief — with a larger-than-life waistband. And he was a drawling southerner, unashamedly so: He is, as he would often say, a fat redneck.
But the true test of candidates' capital is their capacity to transcend their foibles, not the question of whether they have none at all. It's the accepted political wisdom in Washington that Barbour's instincts are peerless, and he proved himself once more the smartest man in the room. Political savvy and goodnatured common sense are no longer enough to propel the best candidate to the White House; rather, they must want the prize to the total exclusion of all other pursuits."
from here: http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0411/Not_wanting_it_enough.html
Political savvy and goodnatured common sense are no longer enough to propel the best candidate to the White House
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing Barbour aide James Richardon is thinking Reagan here, but I'm wondering if he, or anyone else, could name a President after Washington that had political savvy and goodnatured common sense, but for whom the presidency was not a consuming passion.
Never happened, not going to.