A Political Mystery

I like to think, when I am feeling especially proud, that I know what it takes to be a good presidential candidate. You usually have to be a senator, governor, vice president or victorious general. You have to have a voting record that is defensible in front of the nation, not too liberal or conservative or scattershot. You probably should be popular among your own constituents.

If you have those requirements, it seems like, the money and consultants should follow. What else is there, after all? But then how does it happen that some people like Joseph Biden, George Allen, Tom Vilsack and Mike Huckabee can't get their names out of the papers, while seemingly good people like Daniel Inouye, Chuck Grassley, Brad Henry and Dirk Kempthorne can't get theirs in?

And if you think you can find something wrong with those four people that prevents their even being considered for president (and remember what kind of people we've nominated before) there are dozens of other sitting senators and governors. And that's not even counting the former governors and non-politicians who I don't need to say have made up so many of our primary candidates in the past.

Don't tell me it's because all these hundreds of people don't really want to be president. Everyone wants to be president, especially politicians. And even if they haven't publicly stated that they want to be president -- neither has anybody else, and that includes Hillary Clinton. So what is going on?