Best Campaigner Does Not Equal Best President

Mark Halperin, former political director of ABC News and creator of Washington's daily political bible "The Note", is finally starting to make some sense about the horse race aspect of presidential campaigns.

For most of my time covering presidential elections, I shared the view that there was a direct correlation between the skills needed to be a great candidate and a great president. The chaotic and demanding requirements of running for president, I felt, were a perfect test for the toughest job in the world.

But now I think I was wrong. The “campaigner equals leader” formula that inspired me and so many others in the news media is flawed.

Although, you have to wonder what took so long. Doesn't this seem like a fairly obvious point, and one that you would hope the press would have already concluded long ago?

It is ironic, though, that Halperin, who with John Harris, wrote so extensively about the "freak show" nature of the coverage of campaigns would come to this conclusion. Also, ironic that I visit Halperin's page, modestly entitled "The Page", every day to get my official Washington horse race information. To me, Halperin seems to have been one of the great perpetrators of what he is now decrying.

I also find it strange that he desperately tries, and fails, to give a balanced assessment of presidential campaigns not successfully transferring into a President's tenure. He tries to do this with Bush and Clinton. I completely disagree with his assessment that the Clinton Presidency was a failed presidency, and I think most other reasonable people would disagree with that as well. Clinton is just not a good example of a good campaigner who failed in the White House. It is hard to imagine that Halperin even believes that, but he needed to balance his thrashing of Bush with an equally good thrashing of a democratic element.

This is a constant Washington insider mistake. In order to condemn Bush you must find something to condemn Clinton, or the Congressional Democrats for. Sometimes, the President deserves to be trashed in a vacuum, without the necessity of trashing the other guy for balance. Sometimes, balance just does not exist.