In 2008, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the youngest person in the race, managed to be both the grown-up and the candidate you’d most want to play a game of pick-up basketball with, although he delegated the beer-drinking-with-blue-collars to Joe Biden.
Isn’t that combination what we’re always looking for in a president? Someone who seems knowledgable enough about the job that you can trust him to take care of all the stuff you don’t want to know about — but at the same time, someone who doesn’t constantly remind you that you weren’t all that good in school. Bill Clinton was the ultimate policy wonk who also once drove a pickup truck with AstroTurf in the back. A grown-up with the heart of a teenage redneck. It doesn’t get much better than that, especially if you need to win reelection in spite of a sex scandal.
It turns out that being seen as a grown-up is the first step in a pretty complex process. This explains why, when the silly season ends, those labeled “not a serious candidate” either drop out or drop off. Goodbye, Warren Beatty, Carol Moseley Braun, Pat Buchanan, the Donald.
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