Presidential Handicapping

For the life of me, I can't understand why George Allen would be at the top of the list unless the sample is biased toward Virginia Republicans for some reason. His appeal is inexplicable to me -- too much of the jock (or at least the son of a jock) politician in him for me. Besides, he's completely unreliable on social issues. Every politician is a balance of ambition and principle. Allen's meter tips too far toward ambition for me.

As I have admitted in the past I have a soft spot for McCain based on personal experience with the guy. His two biggest assets are the fact that he is rock-solid on national security (the Ombudsman has opined on occasion that he's too much of a hawk which is really saying something in my book), a squish on stem cell research (bad) and God knows what he would do in terms of staffing the federal agencies. I fear significant leftward drift. On the other hand, we Republicans are royalists to the core and I don't think the party can bring itself to reject someone who ran second last time and has been, more or less, a good team player for President Bush, especially on Iraq and terrorism. Besides, he is easily the most electable of the bunch, especially if he takes a conservative carpet-chewer as his number 2.

Which brings me to Sam Brownback. His campaign for president is going to be an implosion of the first order but he has the chops to be a good VP candidate and hold down the right wing in a general election contest. And he's so ambitious he'd be begging for the nomination.

The rest of the guys on this list have about as much chance of being President of the United States as your average contributor to Dr. Curmudgeon and Company. Giuliani, too compromised on social issues; never gets out of Iowa. Bill First? You jest. Did you see his speech at the 2004 convention? That's how he actually talks -- after speech coaching.

Of course, I don't regard the list as being complete. Governors have a way of coming out of nowhere and the actual entrants may look a lot different than this sampling.