David Frum, mentioned in the previous post, also wrote a piece about John McCain last September. He entitled it: "President John McCain? Not likely."

You can read the whole article at http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.24882,filter.all/pub_detail.asp.

Here are some quotes from it:

This was a week of clever manuevers. First, George Bush announced that he would at last bring the captured 9/11 plotters to trial by military commission--if Congress would give him the authority to do so. That puts Democrats in Congress in a very awkward spot. The voters will want justice executed; the Democrats' key constituencies and big donors are calling the commissions "kangaroo courts."

Then, Senator John McCain (the presumptive front-runner for the Republican nomination) revealed his trick: He immediately produced his own version of the President's bill--but one calculated to appeal more to Democrats and the media.

McCain has been performing variations on this same trick for a decade now: vibrating back and forth between Democrats and Republicans, always to intense media acclaim. Can a man really become president in this way?

Most people assume that the answer is yes. According to this usual view, manoeuvres like this week's only enhance McCain's popularity: They move him far enough away from Bush to woo moderates and Democrats--but not so far as to alienate the Republican base.

Well, maybe. But there's a catch: Call it the Lieberman catch....

Then there's a second--and more important--catch: Call it the Eisenhower catch. The American presidency is the supreme executive job on planet Earth. And American voters not unreasonably tend to demand executive experience from job applicants....

John McCain, for all his winsome appeal over the TV camera, has never managed anything bigger than a senator's office....

McCain may prove a brilliant manager. The American public may decide that we are never too old to try new things. They may decide to trust the country to a candidate who, if elected, will be simultaneously the oldest president in American history and the least experienced since John F. Kennedy. They may decide these things. But if history offers any guidance, they probably won't.