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What makes a serious candidate for the presidency? Experience is one agreed qualifier: you ought to have held high office, and done so for a reasonable length of time. It doesn't have to have been a political office, specifically - a distinguished general could become president - but it ought to have tested your abilities to a notable degree.
To be, or to have been a governor, like Rick Perry or Mitt Romney: that would be enough. On the other hand, to be a young senator like Barack Obama - that was pushing it, back in the day when Obama was first encouraged to run in 2008. Obama ran not on experience so much as on the promise he exuded.
But there are many people now sitting around (black Democrats included) shaking their heads and declaring that Obama turned out not to be able to hack it. When the going got tough, he simply did not have sufficient political heft. Yes, he had had promise in abundance, but promise is not enough.
They'll be singing a very different tune, of course, on Tuesday, November 6, 2012, if Obama pulls off a second term, something conventional wisdom found improbable a few weeks ago. Unemployment is too high at nine per cent, and nobody can win an election with unemployment at such a level.
But here's the notable and striking thing: Obama, on present showing, beats all rival candidates. One by one they come before the public as the men or women who can take on this supposedly weak and inexperienced president. For the most part, Obama hardly lifts a finger against them, but they collapse all the same. Against Donald Trump (a man innocent of experience of elected office), Obama made a single amusing after-dinner speech with a few withering wisecracks. That was the end of Trump.
Against Sarah Palin - no contest, she thought twice before deciding against running. Against Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, chair of the Tea Party caucus in Congress (a caucus that apparently never actually meets), I can't remember Obama lifting an ungallant finger. She had one great personal victory last August in the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa. She won the poll, and that seems to have proved her high-water mark.
The excitement on the conservative Republican wing had migrated from Bachmann to the figure of Rick Perry, a new candidate but a strong one by the conventional measures. He had been governor of Texas ever since 2000, when George Bush left that office for the presidency. He had been re-elected three times. He had very wealthy support. One could say he had all the money and experience required.
It turns out that Perry was a local dish that didn't travel far from Texas. In New Hampshire he made a speech to the faithful, recorded in a memorable YouTube clip, in which he appeared to most viewers to be either drunk or to have popped a pill or two too many. He denied this, and no doubt could in time have earned the benefit of the doubt.
Instead, he hit the screens again with a spectacular flub during a Republican presidential debate. Here he was promising, on election to high office, to abolish three government agencies - commerce, education and … the third one he was quite unable to remember. (It was to have been energy.)
This cavalier habit of promising to destroy major agencies used to be a sure way to elicit applause. But even the most ardent Tea Partier required that you could at least remember what you were going to destroy, and why.
Perry's "oops" as he gave up trying to remember his own policy turned into an instant classic catchphrase. His candidacy evaporated.
And now it was time for the genial Herman Cain to pose for his photograph as Mr Not Mitt Romney 2012 - Cain, as innocent of elected office as Trump had been, but with a folksy manner that might just cover the conversational cracks. A black pizza magnate who would bring his managerial skills to Washington, where he had once represented the interests of the restaurant owners. In plain words, a lobbyist. In words still plainer, his words: "I am the Koch brothers' brother from another mother." (The billionaire Koch brothers have been bankrolling the Tea Party.)
The first thing your campaign does, if you are a serious presidential candidate, is go through your past, to look for any potential scandal your rivals might throw at you, and to prepare a damage-limitation exercise. When Cain was accused of sexual harassment, it was quite clear that his campaign - to the extent that there was a campaign - had not anticipated this at all, and Cain was unable to decide quite how forthcoming to be.
He might have weathered that little problem, or even turned it to his advantage (presenting himself as a victim of racist liberal persecution, like Clarence Thomas). Nor might it matter that he thinks Cuban people speak Cuban ("How do you say 'delicious' in Cuban?" he asked in a Miami restaurant this week).
But he was filmed in a brain-freeze worse than Perry's when asked how he would have handled Libya differently from Obama; he quite clearly could not remember whatever he had committed to memory on this subject. Cain is adding to the complexity of his comic character - in the Libya interview he petulantly asks: "Who brought me the water that I did not get?" But he is not adding to his stature as a candidate.
Palin, Trump, Bachmann, Perry, Cain - the next in the series is Newt Gingrich, who already has his hands full dealing with the consequence of his own blatant fibbing. That's a lot of casualties for the Republicans to take. And it argues that Obama has had a streak of luck in his opponents - luck being, of course, another handy attribute for a president.
Reader views (6)
If I was an American, it would be Ron Paul for me. The United States of America IS the Constitution. Amongst all the Republican candidates he is the only one who seems to place any value on that precious document. Are the American people stupid enough to sleepwalk into disaster like King George III did because they were more interested in form than substance? Sharp suits, great hair, expensively capped teeth and condescending folksy baby-talk, do not a leader make.
Obama is a wonderful orator; there is no doubt about that. But as I look across the pond and observe our cousins at a distance I am becoming increasingly alarmed that America is rapidly turning into a police state. I was horrified to see one of New York’s finest casually walk up to a couple of women on a peaceful protest and deliberately pepper-spray them in the face. What kind of a proper man would consider doing such a thing let alone a policeman on duty? Stories like this are legion across the whole of the country from what I can see at a distance. This so-called recent Patriot Act in my view is the vaccine to the U.S. Constitution. Ron Paul is like an old fashioned Whig. Therefore, Dr Ron Paul is the only candidate willing to prescribe the old fashioned purgative necessary, and drag America back from the brink.
- Higgnoraimus, Birmingham, 20/11/2011 10:13
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James Fenton walks in lock step with Obama and the Democratic party. This essay is simply boiler plate talking points from a biased observer. Obama a shoo in with a 9.5% unemployment rate(grossly underestimated by the way)a degraded American credit rating, debt at levels undreamed of,and a President who can't run on his record. According to this kind of thinking James Callahan would have been re-elected instead of Margaret Thatcher.
Romney with all his baggage will win despite the predictable Fentonian smears of the American MSM.Romney is as fluent as Obama , he's won in the bluest of blue states, and he can field a substantial part of the independent vote.
Look out for a Fenton hit piece in the coming months about the sinister Mormons behind Romney. A more likely prediction than the one I have just read.
- Alan, New York,USA, 19/11/2011 05:22
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With opponents like these, Obama's a shoo-in for 2012
Yeah, but you've been saying that about anyone and everyone who is a) Republican and b) NOT Obama, since you started your love-fest for the man on these pages. Credibility is a little lacking there mate.
- Rogan, Irving, 18/11/2011 18:10
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I assume that Mr Fenton is deliberately avoiding mentioning Ron Paul, who is reckoned to be top of the polls in the Republican party at present. He is a serious candidate with many policies we could do with emulating over here. He would certainly challenge the status quo, which perhaps explains the reticence of establishment scribblers.
- Edward, redhill, 18/11/2011 15:01
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All those candidates are far better than Barack It's 2008 Obama
You are shaking in your boots at the inevitable Democrat wipeout in 2012
You have no credibility whatsoever
- Jesus, London, 18/11/2011 14:18
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You're falling into the same trap as the US media and ignoring Ron Paul (not mentioned at all in the article), despite the fact that he reliably polls in the top three of the Republican candidates.
He's a principled constitutionalist, a historian, a strong debater, and has a lot of support at grassroots level, including the overwhelming backing of the US military and veterans. He could pose a genuine threat to Obama.
On the other hand, if the media ignore him for long enough, you they may get your wish and see him eliminated before he gets a chance to face Obama - and US politics would be the weaker for that.
- Peter, Canada, 18/11/2011 14:02
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