I tend to be less afraid of a future Petraeus presidential candidacy than Spencer is. It's not merely that I don't think it's likely to happen (his moment is now, not four years from now), but I don't think it's likely to succeed. Petraeus isn't Eisenhower. He's a popular war general of a basically small war. People like him, but unless they write for The Weekly Standard, they don't have much invested in him. So he won't get a pass by virtue of our psychological dependence on his presence (as Eisenhower did). Moreover, unlike Ike, he'd have to drop into the modern campaign, a grueling, seemingly endless, process. What happens the first time he's grilled about health care? About ethanol? About global warming? About taxes? About his wife, his kids, some stuff he said 20 years ago? If we've learned nothing else over the past 12 months, it's that the endless campaign takes the sheen off even the most gleaming candidates. America's Mayor is polling fourth in Florida and its District Attorney just dropped out of the race. The frontrunners are the two who could best be described as career politicians. It's what the process selects for.
