The Best Test for Presidential Candidates

The first and best measure of the executive skills of any candidate for president is the success of the national campaign he or she directs. How well a candidate raises funds, recruits workers, devises a strategy for deployment of resources and chooses and executes a message and theme — how he and his top advisers manage the campaign over time and in various places under different political rules — is a telling litmus test.

In 2000 and 2004, the Democratic candidates ran against a lame and ludicrous opponent who beat them, though the Democrats had overseen a balanced budget, had raised employment and managed a time of peace. It is hard to fathom how they managed to lose, but they did.

At the start of the present primary season, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) began behind many of his competitors, but beat them early, fast, and with a limited bankroll. He should be a formidable candidate against the Democrats, despite bearing the burden of the Bush presidency. Election management matters.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) began the primaries as the odds-on favorite, with solid funding, extraordinary name recognition and access to a tested and sophisticated political machine. She ran into a buzz-saw named Barack Obama whose unique personality so far has trumped her contentious one. Most important, the test of who can best run the country as its chief executive is speculative and arguable, except in one demonstrable feature. And that is the national campaign each has run.

Sen. Obama’s (D-Ill.) campaign has been impressively successful. He’s brought into the voting rolls new and enthusiastic voters. He’s raised more money, with small donations, than any candidate in history. His strategies in caucus states have been remarkably successful. He has whittled away persistently at Sen. Clinton’s daunting list of committed superdelegates. His overall plan has worked — there is no foreseeable way his opponent will end up with more votes, delegates or states than Sen. Obama. At that, he’s defied early and widespread speculation that a black man couldn’t get the nomination.

In contrast, Sen. Clinton has endured high-visibility staff dramas, had to loan her campaign millions of dollars, failed to wrap up the campaign in early February as planned, and has steadily lost superdelegates she thought she had signed up.

So forget the cute 3 o’clock-in-the-morning image. Look at what we know. Sen. Obama’s record running this national campaign is evidence of a leader who chose staff well, devised a successful strategy and executed the game plan winningly. Those skills are a real — the only — barometer of what kind of chief executive a candidate will be. As we lawyers say, res ipsa loquitur.