President John Mccain? Not Likely

This was a week of clever manoeuvres. First, George Bush announced that he would at last bring the captured 9/11 plotters to trial by military commission--if Congress would give him the authority to do so. That puts Democrats in Congress in a very awkward spot. The voters will want justice executed; the Democrats' key constituencies and big donors are calling the commissions "kangaroo courts."

Then, Senator John McCain (the presumptive front-runner for the Republican nomination) revealed his trick: He immediately produced his own version of the President's bill--but one calculated to appeal more to Democrats and the media.

McCain has been performing variations on this same trick for a decade now: vibrating back and forth between Democrats and Republicans, always to intense media acclaim. Can a man really become president in this way?

Most people assume that the answer is yes. According to this usual view, manoeuvres like this week's only enhance McCain's popularity: They move him far enough away from Bush to woo moderates and Democrats--but not so far as to alienate the Republican base.

Well, maybe. But there's a catch: Call it the Lieberman catch.

McCain's friend and Senate colleague Joe Lieberman likewise made a career out of vibrating between the parties. Like McCain, Lieberman never really strayed that far from the Democratic line: He accumulated a strongly liberal voting record, adhering with special fidelity to every last demand of the environmentalist and civil rights lobbies.

But even though he voted liberal, he forfeited liberal trust. And last month, he forfeited the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator from Connecticut.

Conservative Republicans likewise do not trust John McCain. And candidates who cannot win the trust of their parties do not win their parties' primaries.

Then there's a second--and more important--catch: Call it the Eisenhower catch. The American presidency is the supreme executive job on planet Earth. And American voters not unreasonably tend to demand executive experience from job applicants.

If you look at the list of the winners of presidential elections since 1900, you'll notice that they tend to reach the job in very similar ways.

1) They served as vice president to a popular president. (Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush.)

Or 2) They earned a record as a successful governor. (Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush.)

Or 3) They achieved some huge success in command of some vital mission for the United States. (William Howard Taft as the first governor general of America's new Philippine colony; Herbert Hoover as the chief administrator of the food program that saved millions in Europe from famine after the First World War; Dwight Eisenhower as commander in chief of the Allied forces in Europe in the Second World War.)

What one qualification do these successful candidates conspicuously lack? Service in the U.S. Senate. In fact, only two men in the 20th century won the presidency with no other qualification than Senate service: Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy.

By contrast, the list of losers is a veritable senate roll call: Senator Bryan (three times!), Senator Stevenson (twice), Senator Goldwater, Senator McGovern, Senator Dole, Senator Kerry.

John McCain, for all his winsome appeal over the TV camera, has never managed anything bigger than a senator's office. By contrast, McCain's Republican opponents include two outstanding executives:

Rudy Giuliani, the most successful mayor in U.S. history, who cut New York City's crime rate by two thirds, restored its economy and personally managed the 9/11 emergency response; and also Mitt Romney, a successful businessman, who went on to save the 2002 Olympics from scandal and disaster, and then won election as a Republican governor in Massachusetts, where he balanced the state's budget and widened health coverage without raising taxes.

Romney lacks McCain's name recognition; Giuliani is even more to the left on social issues than McCain. But as Republicans review the experience of the past 6 years--from 9/11 to Iraq to Harriet Miers to Katrina--many of them may decide: Management matters.

McCain may prove a brilliant manager. The American public may decide that we are never too old to try new things. They may decide to trust the country to a candidate who, if elected, will be simultaneously the oldest president in American history and the least experienced since John F. Kennedy. They may decide these things. But if history offers any guidance, they probably won't.