I have some qualms with today's David Brooks column, but I think it gets at something fairly important about John McCain: He's a tremendously compelling national figure who wields an important voice in opposition, but he's not necessarily the sort of guy you'd want running your country. The temperament and recklessness and moral vanity that make him an eager and interesting gadfly could make him an extremely dangerous president. And in picking Sarah Palin, he proved the primacy of those qualities, rather than proving that he could mitigate them as part of the transition from beloved maverick to responsible executive.
