Stress Test: The Candidates With Staying Power

[isbister]

When Joe Lieberman got voted off the island Tuesday night, it was a relief to say goodbye to that mild, admonishing fist. There comes a point when humiliation is excruciating to watch. Or as Bob Dole commented to Larry King, time to remember that old W.C. Fields line -- if at first you don't succeed, try, try again and then give up.

Do you have to be crazy to run for president?

"Think of it this way," political consultant Joe Trippi told me. "If I came to you with 25 of your closest friends carrying a black box with red buttons on it and said, 'We have all looked for the best person to take care of this box, and we've decided that the only one who can protect it is you. If anything happens to it, if you lose it, the entire planet blows up.' Most of us, I mean 280 million of us, would say, 'No! I don't want the goddamn box anywhere near me! Take it away!' Yet every four years a bunch of seven or eight guys come out screaming, 'Give me the box!' "

The most searing moments of any presidential campaign take place off camera, when, as Trippi puts it, the candidate "stares into the abyss." Trippi should know. As the architect of Howard Dean's spectacular rise, before the candidate ejected him two weeks ago in the wake of the New Hampshire debacle, he's still vibrating from the intensity of boom and bust....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14414-2004Feb4.html

[blm]

1. When records and rhetoric are held to closer scrutiny, Kerry always wins.

Zen master.

[BootinUp]

2. Sorry but this article

is worthless blathering to lift the two annointed ones. The only fact in the whole story is Kerry took out a mortgage. Hmmm...Presidential material all right!