David Broder, the dean of political writers in Washington, says the Republicans have a leg up on the Dems this year, and it’s all because of a simple résumé gap.  Clinton, Obama and Edwards have no executive experience. 

By contrast, the Republican field is loaded with people who are accustomed to being in charge of large organizations. Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee were governors of their states of Massachusetts and Arkansas, Rudy Giuliani served as the mayor of New York, and John McCain, as he likes to remind audiences, commanded the largest squadron in the Navy air wing.

In the past, voters have preferred to entrust the White House to those with executive credentials. John Kennedy was the last sitting senator to be elevated to the presidency. Since then, the former governors of Georgia, California, Arkansas and Texas have dominated the list of successful candidates.

This is less a political issue than an issue of ethos, of the perceived ability to lead.  Is Broder right when he says that “the public remains convinced that the Oval Office is a place for executive talents”?

Romney bested McCain by 9 points: 39% to 30%. Slate can’t decide if this is a good thing or not:

So we’re back to square one in the Republican Party. Mitt Romney beat John McCain handily in Michigan, which means there have now been three major GOP contests and three different comeback winners. At this rate, Thompson will win South Carolina and Giuliani Florida. The GOP primary is starting to look like a Pee Wee soccer tournament: Everyone gets a trophy!

Finally, this thing is starting to look like a real old-timey presidential campaign, where you don’t know who’s going to win. And by old-timey, I mean, like 19th century.

Today is M-Day, the Michigan primaries. Word is, it could be Romney’s last chance to stay in the race. Meanwhile, John McCain and Mike Huckabee spent yesterday scouting each other’s voters. The Washington Times reports:

John McCain and Mike Huckabee traded places yesterday, with the war-hawk senator preaching Judeo-Christian values and the ordained Southern Baptist minister talking bullets and bombs at an armored-vehicle plant…Mr. McCain, who won the New Hampshire primary last week and vaulted into the front-runner position for the Republican presidential nomination, has spent the last week trying to lock down independent voters, including evangelicals, who delivered a win to Mr. Huckabee in the Iowa caucuses two weeks ago…

Looking to swipe voters from Mr. McCain, Mr. Huckabee pitched national security and military strength yesterday during a stop in Lansing. With a huge armored truck as a backdrop, he said Michigan has long led the nation with “its capacity to build and manufacture our airplanes and our tanks and our armored vehicles, our bullets and our bombs.”

With presidential primaries based on a combination of voters’ real “druthers” and their perceptions of candidates’ electability in November, which candidate — Huckabee or McCain — has the better shot at swinging the other guy’s voters his way?

News of the decline of language has, it seems, been greatly exaggerated. Which is to say, rhetoric - that old timey art of talking and writing - is not dead, not by a longshot. Everybody practices rhetoric every day, in emails, in conversation, in PowerPoint presentations, and on the campaign trail. Obama’s greatest strength is his ability to use language in powerful ways (this author of a new rhetoric book suggests that Bush’s ability to use language is just as powerful), which leads to the question:

Does a great speech make a great politician or leader?

Hillary Rodham Clinton last week pointedly said not necessarily, noting, in a phrase she borrowed from Mario M. Cuomo, “You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose.” But [former JFK speechwriter] Mr. Sorensen, who is supporting Mr. Obama, said there was a real link between inspirational oratory and inspirational leadership.

“The most important quality for a president, as Kennedy and Roosevelt demonstrated, is not how many roll call votes he answered sitting in the Senate, but his qualities as a leader who can mobilize people, inspire them, galvanize them, arouse them to action,” he said. “The ability to inspire and excite an audience on the campaign trail is one of the reasons I think Obama will be a success as president.”

Great rhetorical skill is no adjunct to great leadership; it is a part of leadership…because leadership requires persuasion of small and large groups of people, and that’s what rhetoric is all about.

Times blogger Judith Warner says that Clinton’s win in New Hampshire was an unfortunate triumph of emotion over logic.

I don’t for a moment begrudge Hillary her victory on Tuesday. But if victory came for the reasons we’ve been led to believe - because women voters ultimately saw in her, exhausted and near defeat, a countenance that mirrored their own - then I hate what that victory says about the state of their lives and the nature of the emotions they carry forward into this race. I hate the thought that women feel beaten down, backed into a corner, overwhelmed and near to breaking point, as Hillary appeared to be in the debate Saturday night. And I hate even more that they’ve got to see a strong, smart and savvy woman cut down to size before they can embrace her as one of their own.

Well, I would agree that nobody wants to see emotion trump logic completely, but I’ve got news for the cold-hearted Warner: the discourse of human beings is about far more than logic. Emotion is used every day in every way, and as long as it’s not the central proof in an argument (”Vote for me because you think I’m funny, kind-hearted, or weepy!”), it’s perfectly appropriate to use emotion to persuade human beings, which have been burdened and blessed with the ability to feel things. Hillary’s run her lifelong campaign on logos, so I think it’s perfectly fair to allow her a little pathos from time to time. Was it calculated? Well, I don’t think it’s as easy as that. I believe it was both calculated and authentic, which is what the best kind of argument is anyway.

(CAVEAT: I know many reformed Evangelicals rebel against the idea of feeling, as it was the dominant rhetorical proof for most of the evils of the 20th century, but that doesn’t mean it’s not okay to feel.)

Dave Barry discusses the unusual results of the New Hampshire primary:

The voters of New Hampshire have made their decision, and the big winner is: Change. Here’s the final vote tally:

Change — 43 percent

Hope — 28 percent

Hope For Change — 17 percent

Hair — 9 percent

Experience — 2 percent

Dennis Kucinich — 1 percent

Read the rest of his analysis here.

HT: Daily Kos

If the presidential candidates were Star Wars characters, who would be Chewbacca? Who would be Leia? Who would be Lord Vader? For those who can’t get enough satire (or almost satire), enjoy.

Big girls don’t cry, but they do get misty. And misty will sometimes help you beat the captain of the academic and the debate team, otherwise known as Mr. Obama. In other news, John McCain took New Hampshire for the Republicans. He didn’t really weep his way to victory. He scowled his way there. Obama took a decent second for the left, and Edwards says he’s in it until the convention. Romney took a decent second for the right, and Huckabee’s still in it, too.

I am no political writer or analyst, but here’s my poorly-intuited belief about the past, the present, and the future of the 2008 presidential race:

1. The democrats and many of their independent friends are falling in love with Obama. He has charmed them, and for a while, they thought he would be a foil for Clinton’s tough talk, adding leaven to the campaign the way Nader did in 2000, the way Ron Paul almost did this year. They didn’t really think Obama could win (too young, too inexperienced), but they liked liking him, and it kept Hillary more fair and more honest, having to contend with a guy like that.

2. Then, Obama won in Iowa.

3. All of a sudden, the fanciful fling with Obama is turning into a real love affair, and the dems are getting starry-eyed thinking of marriage. His one real issue (electability) seemed to disappear with the Iowa win, and the Left is absolutely smitten with the possibility that they could nominate a black man to run for president (I like Obama, I do). But I mean, they are smitten with the idea of him.

4. This smitten-ness is going to get him the nomination.

5. And then, Obama is going to go up against (FILL IN THE BLANK), the Republican candidate. And Obama’s going to lose big, because - no matter how well-spoken, how funny, how self-effacing, how utterly diverse and American and hopeful, he’s just too young, too inexperienced. The black thing isn’t as much a big deal as the age thing.

6. And so, Obama will lose. And the left will lose their starry-eyed smiles and hate themselves for hating on Hillary, they will hate themselves for the way they mocked and mangled and abandoned her during this month. Becuase, they’ll admit, she maybe could have won against (FILL IN THE BLANK), the Republican.

It won’t be pretty to watch, but it may just happen. But, I invite your thoughts. Does my theory hold water?

Here’s a great short editorial about the similarities and differences in Iowa from the 1930s to the 2000s. Among the differences: “[My town] had no newspaper and no mail delivery. Residents daily walked to a post office on the town square. I do recall that there was mail delivery to the surrounding farm houses; the job was not highly paid but it was coveted because it came, on retirement, with a federal pension.”

Among the similarities: “[T]he passionate political gatherings that regularly took place on my grandfather’s front porch. It occurs to me that these were not so different in spirit from the caucuses we are enduring now.” America is a terrific nation. We are a nation of rhetors, orators, writers, arguers, debaters, persuaders. That, I think, is such a blessing.